Control 2 computers each with 2 monitors with 1 Keyboard/Mouse?
Have you looked at Mouse without Borders? Or the non-free Synergy Project?
Solution
There are many applications made for that purpose. You just need to install them on your different machines and your Mouse/Keyboard will be available for both.
There is also a hardware alternative like a "Keyboard/Mouse Switch".
Softwares
- Synergy
- ShareMouse
- Input Director
- Mouse without Borders
- Multiplicity
- Teleport
- SynergyKM
- Mouse Broadcaster
Links
Alternativeto
Lifehacker Article
Mouse Sharing
Guidingtech Article
I have 4 PC's running 8 monitors and Synergy runs across the lot no problem. All PC's are running windows 7 but I used to run Win XP as well on the same network
Use remote desktop in multi-monitor mode:
mstsc /span
If you have trouble with this open mstsc, set up connection, click Advanced->Save As, edit the resulting .RDP file, and add this line at bottom of file:
span monitors:i:1
+1 for Input Director.
Synergy/Synergy+ gave me some troubles, but Input Director has been a stable experience on my setup (2 laptop PCs, 1 tower PC, 5 monitors). YMMV, of course. I can slide my mouse cursor across monitors like one giant tiled desktop. Input Director defines connected computers as master-slave.
From a single keyboard, I can control a slave computer as if I was at the physical keyboard connected to it -- if I hit Alt-PrtSc, it captures the window of the slave computer. Ctrl-Shift-Esc brings up Process Hacker (Task Manager) on the slave computer.
My recall on this next point may be faulty, and if so, disregard it: I seem to recall that Synergy didn't allow me to freely use all keystroke combinations the way ID does, which is one reason I prefer ID.