I'm running an ATI 6870 card with a Samsung 24" monitor as the main display, but I also have my Sony TV connected via HDMI to my AV receiver; when I switch to that input, the graphics card enables the TV as a second monitor.

With Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, I could go into initial settings and change to the second (identically named) monitor, set the appropriate 1920x1080 resolution, and then when I ran the game my main monitor would continue to display my Windows desktop, while the game would appear on the TV.

However when I do this with Skyrim, the game still renders on the Samsung monitor - the only difference being that the opening Bethesda logo animation does not display if I set the display device to be the TV.

The TV continues to show nothing but my desktop wallpaper.

Would love to get this working on the TV like FO3 and FNV did, so I can grab my X360 wireless controller, sit on the couch and play Skyrim on a 55" screen! Is anyone doing this successfully, or have I encountered a bug?

Catalyst drivers are the latest, 11.11, released today, btw.

This may not be exactly what you are trying to do, but you could set the second monitor to your primary display in the ATI software. You might also want to try the simple borderless window mod http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4 at Skyrim Nexus. This gives you fullscreen appearance with the ability to alt+tab in and out of the game, just don't try it during the loading screen.

Go http://widescreengamingforum.com/dr/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/en and download the patcher. Then, before you do anything else go into documents\mygames\skyrim and edit isize h and isize w to your desired resolution in the skyrimprefs file. Once you've edited the ini, launch the patcher (needs to be done prior to each time you load the game), give it the info it needs, and then fire up Skyrim!

The thing is that none of that should be necessary (and is a pain to boot - I don't want to mod, especially given the likely frequency of updates to come, and I certainly don't want to run windowed). FO3 and FNV still run flawlessly on the second monitor simply by selecting it in the launcher, yet Skyrim seems to try to throw up its intro logo movie onto monitor 2, fails, and just runs the game on the primary display. On what is effectively the same engine, this can't be by design


The above is for running the game across multiple monitors; I just want it to display on a secondary one. Every other game I have that includes monitor selection in its launcher allows this...

I run it on my 2nd monitor, my 32 inch Samsung TV. . . and i wasnt aware there was any other way OTHER than going into ur windows display and clicking "make this my main display" for my 32 inch TV. when i click that it all works fine. theres another way?

Yes, by selecting the monitor that you want the game to display on in the launcher.

Except in the case of Skyrim, this feature is there but does not work.

I am having this exact same issue. I want to be able to run Skyrim on my second monitor, while leaving the main monitor displaying my Windows desktop. I hope they introduce a patch soon to fix this. I am running a ATI Radeon HD5870.

Tested this again with the small patch released today via Steam, and can confirm that this bug still exists.

I have no problems playing Skyrim on my secondary monitor, but I set it to primary automatically when I plug it in, which disables the first monitor. I guess you don't want to be unplugging/replugging in your secondary when you use it, either...

Patch 1.2: still not fixed. Exactly the same symptoms: Beth logo video does not play, then the game displays in the aspect ratio and resolution set for the secondary monitor, but on the primary one.

I've since confirmed that this is almost certainly not not a driver issue - it happens on both ATI and Nvidia cards - and not a launcher issue (changing the launcher settings updates the INI file's iAdapter string just fine).

Today's update (executable 1.3.7) STILL has not fixed the inability to run the game on a secondary monitor. Same symptoms - a "flicker" on the secondary monitor at game launch and at game exit is the only sign of life on that screen, and the game renders on the primary monitor in the wrong resolution.

Nothing is logged in Event Viewer in relation to this and it's pretty clear by now it's an issue with the game code.

PLEASE Bethesda, fix this so I can actually play the game. I've only gotten to the stage of the first dragon kill before realising that I'd enjoy the game a hell of a lot more if I didn't have to sit at my desk to play it!

Download the AntiFreeze patch 9 from ENB -- http://enbdev.com/download_en.htm

The configuration file has a [MULTIHEAD] section that should be helpful.

I have the same issue. I'm running a triple monitor setup and don't like having my center monitor as the primary display. It screws up my triple-monitor wallpaper

My quick fix was to set 2 presets in Catalyst Control Center, one for the 'standard' monitor setup and one for 'middle monitor primary'. I assigned a hotkey to each preset, and it's a simple Alt-F2 before launching Skyrim, and Alt-F1 to return things to normal.

Very interesting. That mod (just a modified DirectX 9 DLL dropped into the game folder) did work, but only after editing the mod's INI file by hand; while both displays showed up in the Skyrim launcher (both called "ENB"), selecting the secondary one did not work. Forcing the secondary display via INI did. It then drops the game onto the secondary display in exactly the same way that Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas do in their vanilla installs.

So it CAN work. Now all we need is for Bethesda to fix whatever bug it is that's causing the secondary display to fail, so we can run the game on the secondary display without having to resort to an untested mod that requires hand-editing of a text file to change displays, which forces an obnoxious an mood-destroying mod-credit paragraph onto the opening screens, and which for me seemed to introduce a phenomenal amount of stuttering.

Today's update 1.3.10.0 - wait for it - has NOT fixed the secondary-monitor bug. Still exactly the same symptoms.

Please, PLEASE Bethesda, take a moment to get this fixed in the next patch!