How to turn off particular monitor with .NET?

Question

OK, I know there are quite a few posts on this topic. However, none of them provide the solution to my issue: I don't want just to turn off my monitor(s), I wish my code to turn off a specific monitor. The URL the most people refer to, http://fci-h.blogspot.com/2007/03/turn-off-your-monitor-via-code-c.html, doesn't help here, as it turns off all the displays.

So, I have my laptop screen and an additional external monitor. While I'm watching movies, I switch the display to the external monitor and my laptop screen goes black, however, it's still on and glowing in the dark. I wish to turn it off. Could anyone help please?

EDIT: Is there any way to acomplish this, meaning it needn't have to be written in .Net. Basically, I just need an .exe file that's able to turn the particular monitor off and on alternately.

Answer 1

It looks like there's no good way of turning off a specific monitor, but it is possible to set your laptop's backlight to minimum brightness. Depending on which version of Windows you have, there are different ways to do it:

• send IOCTL_VIDEO_SET_DISPLAY_BRIGHTNESS I/O control as described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dvdarchive/cc163415.aspx
• use WMI method WmiSetBrightness as described here: What API call would I use to change brightness of laptop (.NET)?
• use Win API SetMonitorBrightness, but I don't know of anybody who has done it in C#.