How to set up a small workstation at home using an old laptop?(Use your old laptop as second screen or screen extender)

A standard workstation setup.

Hello Guys, I am back with another tutorial today. Ever felt envious of those big MNC's workers or developers having their own workstation and wanted that same feel on your home or for your startup. There could be several benefits of setting up another screen with your main laptop, obviously better multitasking is a major reason to set up this kind of environment.





So today I will be putting my old HP Pavillion G4 laptop into work. You can use any old laptop for this purpose. This guide will be showing two approaches:-

1. The first method will require an active wifi connection.
2. The second method will be requiring a LAN cable, that means your wifi will be free for connecting to any other hotspot. 

1. Wifi Method:-

Though this method doesn't require internet but requires wifi connection and also is very unstable. This would be working swiftly on newer devices better than older devices. Honestly speaking I didn't like it much as there was considerable lag on this method but anyway here are the steps:-

STEP 1 

• Go to your old laptop o PC and press Windows key and search for "Connect".

STEP 2

• Open Connect app and make sure that both your laptops or PCs are on the same wifi network.
• Press Windows + I and open settings on your main laptop.
• Search for "Bluetooth & other devices" in Find a setting box, and open it.

STEP 3

• Click on "Add Bluetooth or other device".

• Select "Wireless display or dock".
• Now after a moment of loading, you will be seeing your old laptop's name just click on it.

• Now you may be asked to enter a pin and then your connection will be established.

STEP 4

• Now to change it to for extended laptop, click on notification button on your taskbar, select "project" and then click on "Extend".

• Now come to desktop and right click on it. Then select "Display settings". Here you can drag and drop the second screen according to its physical arrangement in my case I have it on the left of my main screen so I have put it on left. You can also change screen resolution here according to your need

That's it now you can wirelessly access your old laptop as screen extender. Do comment if you successfully managed to set up your laptop like this and if possible give a small review of it.

2. LAN method 

In this method, we will be requiring a LAN cable and ethernet cards on both the laptop. This is much more stable method than the wifi one and does not give any kind of lags.

STEP 1

• Head over to team viewer site and download the latest version for your laptop.
• Now start the installation and select the options on the first screen as given below.

• Now click "Accept-next" and then click "OK" to give permission now on second installation screen click "Finish" and let the installation complete.

STEP 2

• Now open the control panel and then go to "Network and Sharing center". Then go to "change adapter settings".

• In "change adapter settings" select "Ethernet" and right click on it. Then select "Properties".

• Now select "Internet Protocol Version 4(TCP/IPv4)" and click "properties. Then configure everything as given below on your main laptop.

• Similarly, on your old laptop configure it as given below.

STEP 3

• Now open Team Viewer on both the laptops and click on "Extras" on both the laptop and then click "Options" and change "Incoming LAN connections" as "accept exclusively" on both the laptops.

• Now on your main laptop go to "Security" and set a password, also confirm the same and then click "OK".

STEP 4

• Now make sure you have disabled wifi on both laptops and connect the laptops using LAN cable. Open team viewer and you should see "Your ID" as your IP address which you have entered earlier.

Main Screen Laptop

Second Screen Laptop

• Now enter the IP address of your main laptop on your second screen laptop's team viewer and click connect, then you will be asked to enter the password which you have entered earlier and click "OK".

• Now you will be connected via team viewer then follow the STEP 4 of method 1 (wifi). Now connect your main laptop to wifi and you will be able to access internet also.

That's it this way you can set up a more stable second screen or extended screen without any lags. I hoped guys you would like this article. Do comment on what you think about these methods and

share your experience.

Here's a video that will better explain the above steps.