Did you know that most newer computer display adapters allow you to rotate your screen’s display? Rotating your screen is not something that we normally do because our monitor sits the way it is and we don’t move them upside down. However, this is something that is more common these days because multi monitor setups are sometimes needed for professionals who perhaps need an extra portrait oriented display for their work. Some monitors can actually give you the option to rotate the display 90 degrees for this very purpose.
If you think about it, reading books or documents on your screen is probably more natural when viewed in portrait mode. Books, magazines, printed documents and eBook readers like the Kindle are all oriented in this way. You won’t find much at your local library which you can read in a landscape view. A lot of people have netbooks such as EeePC nowadays because they are small and portable. You might consider rotating the screen so that you can read PDFs, eBook’s and other documents in A4 format more comfortably and thereby turning the computer into an eBook reader.
For most displays, it’s pretty easy to rotate your viewable area by 90 degrees and switching between landscape and portrait views. Also, if you have a computer attached to a projector, the default view will most likely be upside down, so you will need to rotate your screen 180 degrees to get the image the right way up.
The first method is to try looking if your display adapter driver supports rotating display or not, many of them do. You should be able to right click on the desktop and select your display adapter’s properties, or get access through the Control Panel.
If you have an nVidia display adapter the option is easy navigating to. Simply open the nVidia Control Panel, make sure the Display tree is open on the left and click on Rotate Display. Then you can use the radio buttons or the arrows to rotate the display to the required setting. You can rotate 90 degrees to the right or left and also a 180 degree flip.
On my laptop that is using an ATI driver, there is also a Rotation section in the Catalyst Control Center. It is accessed via the Displays Manager setting.
And the Intel driver also has the ability to rotate the screen through its Control Panel properties -> Display Settings. Just tick the box to enable it and select the orientation.
What if you can’t find any rotation tabs at all in display properties? No worries, here is a free tool called iRotate developed by EnTech Taiwan which provides convenient access to the native rotation capabilities present in contemporary display drivers, via a popup menu accessible from the system tray and optional system-wide hotkeys.
By using the rotation capabilities already present in graphics drivers provided by ATI, nVidia, Intel, Matrox, S3, VIA and some limited support for others such as SIS, iRotate offers a quick and easy way to rotate the screen with minimal impact on system resources. The entire iRotate package is a tiny 125k and includes the installation, documentation, and native language support in all major European and Asian languages. iRotate also supports multiple graphics cards simultaneously and under every multi-monitor enabled operating system from Windows 98 to Vista (I have tried it in Windows 7 32bit and it works fine).
There is another small tool around called EeeRotate that uses iRotate to rotate your screen and touchpad at the same time. It is especially designed for EeePC but the author of this tool claims that it should work with all computers. It worked on my desktop but not laptop. There’s only 2 hotkeys to use which is Ctrl+Alt+Right to rotate screen and touchpad by 270 degrees and Ctrl+Alt+Up to set the display back to normal.
OMG, I just searched rotate screen on control panel, and it showed everything I needed to know about the rotation. THANK YOUUU :) .
Ps, for the ones that are saying o it wont work on mine… well there are two solutions to that.. you probably have a very cheap computer that doesnt allow that,,, or you’re just dumb and can’t fallow instructions!
dude dis is win 7 not xp ………..cannot find !!!
“Today I will share with you how easy it is to rotate your display???? Then what? Where’s the rest of the article?
Perhaps not on laptops with Intel Mobile Graphics but it DOES work on my Samsung N150 Netbook with IMGraphics.
In fact not only does it work but I just simply hold down Ctrl-Alt then either the left-right-up or down arrow and it flips to which arrow I tap.
Nice! I can and do use my netbook in portrait mode easy enough when reading long pages. Of course it would be really sweet if the mouse pad changed accordingly to mode….perhaps that’s coming?
Screen rotation doesn’t works on laptop(s) with Intel mobile graphic card only. It works perfectly on other laptop(s) with Nvidia & Ati, and Intel on desktop(s).
The solution is no solution for those laptop(s) with Intel mobile graphic card. Maybe someday, who knows, only Intel knows… Perhaps they might only implement those with very “Latest” graphic card only…
If you can’t get your screen to rotate and you own an Acer brand laptop or netbook, the problem is this: Acer sucks!
Acer, in all their wisdom, decided to completely remove the ability to rotate by hard coding the “lock down” measure into the video bios. Who knows what their reason was, they’ve never had to have a good reason to do the stupid stuff they do in the past.
I purchased a computer for my mother in the late 90s from Acer and I swore it would be my last. In a leap of faith I purchased an Acer netbook hoping to get the best of both worlds: netbook and e-reader in one. But, unlike the rest of the netbook users in the world, Acer thinks we should be limited.
NEVER BUY ACER!
Boycott this brand at all costs.
hi i am arwa can u help me to rotate give me a worksheet about it ok i want to learn about it it is good to learn about it my teacher sai okkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
Thank you!!!! My monitor flipped and I have no idea how it happened. I Googled “monitor screen rotated.” and with your help, fixed it in no time.
Steph
Catalyst control centre bugged out on me recently, so I lost it’s built-in rotation functions, which are extremely useful for ebooks, PDF files, and forum viewing, to name a few. iRotate accesses this functionality perfectly. Thanks!
I have an acer aspire one and just downloaded ebooks reader Amigo Reader and a book. Rotated the screen and it rotates but the it doesn’t cover the entire screen; only the upper half. And when I rotate it back it stays on half screen and won ‘t let me change it. Any ideas? I thought I was cruising righ talong and poof – burst my little IT bubble.
Thanks to Blackcobra for the simple solution
a lot of thnkx
patulong naman po,na rotate po kc pabaligtad un screen/TASK BAR ng computer namin.ayaw po gumana ng ctrl+alt+ arrow keys sa computer namin.. windows vista po un comp naen.. tnx!!!
Gracias, me sirvió mucho, no me funcionaba lo de las flechas con CTR+ALT ni ALTGR.
Darko
February 16th, 2010 at 10:32 pm 29
Whatever you say, i think that display rotation is totally useless function! But maybe some day i will decide to rotate my 19 inch – CRT – monitor and have some rotating fun! hahahahahahahahahahahaha! CHEERS FRIENDS!!!
———————————
I’m using my old acer in my car, monted at the rof upside down so I need to flip the screen upside down ;)
Thanks
It worked.
Thanks again.
Elaine
Whatever you say, i think that display rotation is totally useless function! But maybe some day i will decide to rotate my 19 inch – CRT – monitor and have some rotating fun! hahahahahahahahahahahaha! CHEERS FRIENDS!!!
This doesn’t work with my laptop. It’s an ACER brand. I tried the arrow things and the way you just wrote. PLEASE HELP!!! :)
how do you rotate the screen on a netbook
A lot of people have netbooks such as EeePC nowadays because they are small and portable.
My Tablet PC rotates to “normal” and “270 degrees” but the options for 90 and 180 are missing.
Any idea how to add these?
Same here. My one year old rotated the screen. Thanks! -E
My acer laptop screen was upside down, and you helped me fix it.
Thank you.
Loved the info on screen rotation. Just what I was hoping to do with my new netbook.
Question; I want to reduce a window to thumbnail size. I want to monitor my wifi network full time, but the window will only reduce to 1/4. I would like it to be
thumbnail or maybe 2″x2″. Sugestions?
NGAAAAHHHH
THANKS!
pressing ctrl + Alt + up/down/left or right, does not work on all graphics card models. This is actually a hot key which you can disable or enable from your graphics card properties (if your model supports it).
If this hot key does not work, look in your graphics card properties as explained above pm how to rotate or flip the display.
Do you know of any software that can flip my display upside down?
when i say ‘flip’ it means NOT rotate~
Portrait mode is awesome, especially with Multiple Monitors. I have a really nice SUPER PC with Three monitors from Multi-Monitors.com
I have a 24″ LCD in the middle, and two 19″ LCDs in portrait mode on the side. NVidia is cool!
Great Post!
hi, Ray:-)
i have an additional idea for you..
sonycsl.co.jp/person/rekimoto/tsense/soft/index.html
i highly recommend this<3
This one is a lot more simple (and well known) then most of your emails but I like the emails that you’ve been sending out lately… instead of just giving out virus checkers etc they’re actualy teaching us stuff.
Without the tool, just press contl + Alt + arrowkey does the magic, why do you need this additional tool.
HOW to using linux ubuntu?
nice
:-)
where do i find the nvidia control panel in my hp dv series laptop? ray pl help
nice post dost…
This is really strange, you answer all my questions without ask you.
Congrats from Chile, great blog.
Great! thanks again Ray..
Nice post ray…
BTW, I want to ask u something.
the picture in email from u isnt showed. It only shows the words…
What’s wrong with my email?
link is dead ray, thanks for the info :)
iRotate doesn’t work on my Acer laptop. Sorry.
You forgot to add the download link to the iRotate
Nice Post :D
Thanks for this tip, indeed it makes a laptop more fun to use to read ebooks. And also if its necessary to check confidential infos, will be safer from other views.
Control + Alt + arrow keys would also do it :)
Good!