Display of External hard drive from Macbook to TV

Hi, I recently bought an external hard-drive and also use my mac as a dvd player. It was working fine, but I must have changed a setting or something as now when plugged in, it only shows desktop wallpaper and nothing else. I can no longer see the icons or a dvd playing through external hard-drive on inside my mac. How do I set it back so I can once again enjoy dvds through my mac? Thanks...

Joanne.M wrote:
I recently bought an external hard-drive and also use my mac as a dvd player. It was working fine, but I must have changed a setting or something as now when plugged in, it only shows desktop wallpaper and nothing else. I can no longer see the icons or a dvd playing through external hard-drive on inside my mac. How do I set it back so I can once again enjoy dvds through my mac? Thanks...
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
Your post has a lot of unqualified "it"s and omitted details that make it hard to follow what's going on. For example, the subject of your post seems to indicate that you're trying to use a TV as an external display. Is that true? Is that TV the "it" that "only shows desktop wallpaper?
When you play a DVD, does it appear on your MacBook's built-in display? Have you tried dragging the player window onto your TV?
If you launch System Preferences and select the Displays panel, do you see a window in each display?
Two other comments:
1) I suspect that the external drive has nothing to do with your display problem.
2) Your system information is confusing. If you're running "Leopard Mac OS X (10.5)", then how can it be "approx Mac OS X 10.4"? It's easier for people to help you if your system information is clear and accurate.

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