Question Dual monitors work fine, but when first one is disconnected the second one stops working ?

[Computer dunce]

Bit of a story, I have an old gaming pc with a big monitor, a few years ago, I got a gaming laptop, for travel purposes, but in the house I want to use the big monitor with the laptop, so I hooked up a smaller monitor to the pc. When I have both the monitors plugged in to my PC they work fine, but when I unplug the big one, the small one loses signal?

The small one is using a vga cord with an adaptor to hook it up to an hdmi port on the back of the pc. The large monitor uses ... it's like the vga plug but larger (I'm sorry, I'm pretty dense when it comes to computers). Both plug into my video card. Dunno if most of that is relevant just wanted to provide as much info as possible. Any advice on how I can get the pc to work with just the smaller monitor?
Thank you

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

We're going to need a little more information. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitors: You can find info of them on the back or side of the panel's bezel.

Might want to also see if you can find a name for the HDMI to VGA adapter. I've deduced that the other panel is tethered to your GPU with a DVI port.

Try powering up the system while the large monitor is disconnected from your rig and see if you get display on the smaller panel. If you do, then it's perhaps due to a corruption in your GPU driver or it needs updating. Might want to also try and use the panel and adapter on a donor system to see if they work on said donor system, to rule out a faulty adapter.