thinkpad e550, acer al2216w 22" monitor, vga external output, debian 8.3 with xfce or gnome.

i also have win7 & ubuntu 14.04 on this & they both see the monitor & work ok.

cant seem to clone external monitor in debian.
i get 2 black screens unless i unplug the external monitor. actually the acer is grey/black with a mouse cursor i can move around but can do nothing with the mouse. the laptop has nothing on screen. this is true in both xfce & gnome desktops.

below is output of xrandr:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
eDP1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 193mm
1920x1080 60.00*+ 59.93
1680x1050 59.95 59.88
1600x1024 60.17
1400x1050 59.98
1280x1024 60.02
1440x900 59.89
1280x960 60.00
1360x768 59.80 59.96
1152x864 60.00
1024x768 60.00
800x600 60.32 56.25
640x480 59.94
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
------------------------
below is output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Host Bridge -OPI (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Integrated Graphics (rev 09)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Audio Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP USB xHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP MEI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (3) I218-V (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev e3)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev e3)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev e3)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev e3)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP USB EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI Mode] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Thermal Management Controller (rev 03)
04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7265 (rev 61)
05:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Opal XT [Radeon R7 M265] (rev ff)
06:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5227 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
-------------------------

still trying to get this going.

i did discover that if i go to any console both monitors come up & i can startx to desktop & both monitors are fine.

so theres something fouled up with the boot process.

i tried creating a file for both monitors in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d but no luck as im not sure what to put in there.

any ideas?

solved problem by installing debian testing