Only empty desktop shows on projector

[Raiyan Kamal]

Hi,
I'm not sure if its a hardware issue, but this section of the forum seemed the most appropriate place to post this.
I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 in a Dell Inspiron N4110 laptop. For some reason whenever the laptop is hooked up with a projector, only an empty desktop would show up on the projector screen. No mouse pointer, and none of the icons I placed on desktop. If an application is running, that would not be visible either. However, everything seems to work fine on the laptop. I tried with two different projectors in different classrooms, all the same.
However, if I hookup the projector before starting the laptop, or restart it while the projector still hooked up, things show up properly after the start up. I would like to work without restarting if possible. Thanks.

[thesscan]

So as I understand you connect your laptop with a projector and the projector only shows the home screen.Hmmm.. did you try applying system settings> displays> and then choose the laptop screen and change it to off? I did this in a public projection and it worked fine, with the only minus that I could only see the projector screen not the computer... But it was OK, for me at least....

[Raiyan Kamal]

Thanks for the reply. Finally I got a chance to try your suggestion while the classroom was empty.
While going through the options in display settings, I realize that Ubuntu was considering the projector as a second screen right next to my original screen. So this was not a bug, just a feature.