Can't enable third screen on Samsung NP700Z5C

[Ross Gardiner]

[Background]
I have a Samsung NP700Z5C laptop. This has two external display connectors: one HDMI and one proprietary mini-VGA

The laptop has a 1600x900 display. I also have two 24" 1920x1080 monitors. One is plugged into the HDMI port (this works as expected). The other is plugged, via an adapter (model AA-AV2N12B), into the mini-VGA port. This does not work correctly.

I have experienced a number of issues:

[1.]
The system does not detect the mini-VGA display correctly.

It appears in the Screen Display dialog as 'Unknown Display', and is disabled by default. If I have the system set up as described above, then the other two monitors work correctly at their native resolutions. Clicking the toggle to enable the second 24" monitor (the 'Unknown Display') produces the following error message:

>The selected configuration for displays could not be applied
>could not set the configuration for CRTC 65

And then the mini-VGA monitor is enabled - but at the wrong resolution (1024x768). The other monitor is disabled automatically.

[2.]
With the system in the state at the end of [1.], I attempted to re-enable the HDMI monitor - but received the following two error messages:

>Failed to apply configuration: %s
>GDBus.Error:org.gtk.GDBus.UnmappedGError.Quark._gnome_2drr_2derror_2dquark.Code2: could not set the configuration for CRTC 65

>The selected configuration for displays could not be applied
>could not set the configuration for CRTC 65

The mini-VGA monitor remained enabled (at the wrong resolution), while the HDMI monitor was not re-enabled as expected. In order to re-enable the HDMI monitor, I had to first disable the mini-VGA monitor.

[3.]
If the

>The selected configuration for displays could not be applied
>could not set the configuration for CRTC 65

message is not closed quickly enough, the following error message is displayed:

>Failed to apply configuration: %s
>Timeout was reached

Apart from anything, there appears to be some kind of format string issue here.

_________________________________________________________________

Notes:

* I tried to set the mini-VGA monitor resolution with xrandr --mode, but got a similar error message.
* Triple-head doesn't really matter to me - though it should work - I just want to use the dual monitors when they're plugged in. I can't do this, because I can't find a way to set the resolution of the mini-VGA monitor correctly.
* This setup works fine under Windows 7 - though I did have to fiddle a bit to set it up initially.

_________________________________________________________________

-- System info

Description: Ubuntu Trusty Tahr (development branch)
Release: 14.04

-- Package info

unity-control-center:
  Installed: 14.04.3+14.04.20140328-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 14.04.3+14.04.20140407-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
     14.04.3+14.04.20140407-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages
 *** 14.04.3+14.04.20140328-0ubuntu1 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: unity-control-center 14.04.3+14.04.20140328-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-23.45-generic 3.13.8
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Apr 8 20:32:33 2014
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/unity-control-center
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-05 (2 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Beta amd64 (20140326)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity-control-center
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
usr_lib_unity-control-center:
 activity-log-manager 0.9.7-0ubuntu12
 deja-dup 30.0-0ubuntu4

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[NoBugs! (luke32j)]

I see nearly the exact problem on Dell XPS 15, which is Intel+Nvidia GeForce GT 630M, should be similar to the Samsung's Intel+GEforce 640M.

I have the Nvidia driver working, both outputs work, but not at the same time.
See http://askubuntu.com/questions/501379/cant-use-both-display-outputs-on-xps-laptop

[William Harryman (william-harryman)]

I have the same error on my laptop, running 14.04 LTS with an AMD Radeon Mobility HD 5800 series graphics card. I attempted to plug in a monitor into the HDMI and one into the VGA ports, while running the laptop screen. From researching, it appears that this card, and presumably others, only allow two "legacy" connections , and I'm assuming that one of those connections is taken up by the laptop monitor, preventing the "third" monitor from being activated - if I activate the HDMI monitor, the VGA switches off, and vice versa, again with the unintelligible error messages observed above (I think mine said CRTC 148/149, and same "unmapped Quark" error.
If your graphics card has a DisplayPort, you can use an 'active' adapter and plug in the third monitor, as one solution.
Hopefully this description can help run down the string error msg, and at least this description might help someone who arrives here by Google.