external monitor problems?

Hi,
I'm hoping someone can help me with a problem that recently and inexplicably popped up. I'm running direct RT on a macbook using bootcamp to run windows xp, and I have the macbook connected to a touchscreen monitor. Up until yesterday everything was great--I could run directRT on the macbook and it would show up on the touchscreen. Everything was glorious. Then for some reason yesterday afternoon I plugged in the monitor and the display no longer worked--in order to get the monitor to register anything on the computer at all I had to check the button that said to extend the desktop onto the second monitor. I hadn't changed any settings and I can't figure out what happened or how to get it back to mirroring the displays.
Having the screen extended to the second monitor would be ok if directRT would run on the second monitor, but it won't, it'll only run on the laptop. SO, I need one of two solutions to this problem:
(1) a way to mirror the displays on my laptop with the external monitor (I've tried all the obvious things like clicking on the button to make the external display my primary display, unchecking the extend screen button, all of those things just make the second monitor go away).
OR
(2) a way to tell directRT to run on the second monitor instead of the laptop.
Can anyone help? Please? :)
Thanks!!

Not sure what to suggest here aside from trying the beta for the 2010 version. Are you running v2008 or earlier? If so, contact service @empirisoft.com and you can request a copy of the beta to try. Hard to say what it could be without knowing what changed in your MAC or XP OSs and/or hardware configuration.

Thanks! I've been running the 2008 version, I'll see about version 2010, hopefully that will help! I didn't change any settings, but I've noticed that when I change the monitor settings it sometimes converts back to ignoring the 2nd screen until I tell it specifically to extend, so for some reason it must have reset itself. Very mysterious. I hope the beta solves the problem!

The 2010 beta build contains an option to render the graphics in a window, rather than fullscreen; however, I'm not sure that this feature is an ideal fix for the problem.

It may be helpful to try and further troubleshoot the current setup.

It seems that you're able to get the computer to extend space to the second monitor, but cannot get it to mirror as it once did -- correct?

The predicament is odd. Perhaps it may be helpful to try extending the monitor through the macbook, and from there mirroring the monitor within Windows XP.

I just tried it with no luck--I unchecked mirroring in the mac side then switched to the PC side. When I switched the same thing as always happened; namely, the monitor registered no signal until I went into the display properties and checked 'extend my windows desktop onto this monitor.' Then when I tried to check "Use this device as the primary monitor" it grayed out the second monitor and took away the image from that screen.
I'm so confused, I have no idea what happened and why it won't play nicely anymore!
Thanks for your help!

I think I may have just fixed it (though I'm not at the lab to test it out with the touchscreen, so I may be back in touch if it's still not working). I had to go into the monitor settings and click on the driver and then click on 'graphics properties'. There was a setting called "Multiple Display" and what had been set up before was the "Extended Desktop" setting. However, there was also a setting for "Intel(R) Dual Display Clone", when I clicked on that it went back to mirroring the display just fine. I have no idea what happened to make it switch over in the first place, but hopefully it will now work just fine. Other people are testing in the lab until this evening, so I'll test it out with the touchscreen tonight and get back to you if it's still not fixed.
Thanks again for your help!

Thanks so much for the update Ellen, very useful information. Hope all is going well.