Fix Windows 7 Window Managment.

[elkinm]

Windows has an annoying feature of detecting DP and HDMI displays and automatically adjusting display settings. As described here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Understanding-multiple-monitors

The problem is that it does not work most of the time.

I set up one monitor, as I want it. connect a second. Windows resets or messes up the resolution of the existing monitor so I need to set up both again and re-arrange all the windows.

When I unplug the monitor I often need to reset the resolution again and all my icons and windows are all over the place. This becomes most annoying if I have displays in portrait mode and have to re-rotate them.

I am not looking to disable the monitor detection as that seems impossible for now, but I would like windows to remember the other monitor settings and to move or keep windows were they were when the monitor is re-connected as it is supposed to do.

Thanks

 

[gmaster456]

Use AMD catalyst or nVidia control panel to manage your monitors. I had problems with windows managing multiple displays and using the graphics card software fixed it. You custom set each monitor to its own settings and save.

 

[elkinm]

Thanks, but unfortunately the AMD drivers did not help (Latest 12.1 cat). I have it set to manually detect but it still causes problems.

When a monitor is disconnected I get a prompt saying that there was a link failure and windows can no longer display the configured resolution and then I have to reconfigure the resolutions and orientation.

I did notice that the AMD drivers keep the removed monitor active as a generic 640x480 display which I can increase to 1920x1200 which helps a little. But I use 2560x1600 resolutions and cannot force those.

I noticed that with AMD for a 3 monitor configuration of [1] [2] [3]. Say I disconnect 3 then configure just 1 and 2 with a virtual 3 as big as I can make it it will remeber this setup. The I have to do the setup with 2 disconnected, than with 1 disconnected then with 1 and 2 and 1 and 3 and 2 and 3 disconnected. Then it will remeber at least the display orientation and resolution, but all the icons and windows are still out of control.

Further more, if a display breaks and I replace it with an identical model. Windows detects it as a new display I need to do the entire setup from the beginning.

Display issues aside. If I unplug or turn off 1 display windows goes nuts. When I plug it back in I expect my normal 3 monitor setup including all the windows to be fully restored, but that is not the case especially for the windows.

Thanks again.

 

[elkinm]

I wanted to add the only time that nothing goes wrong is if the PC turns off the monitors.

If I set the PC to turn off the monitors after 1 minute, when the monitors are off I unplug and turn off at will. As long as everything is plugged in and on when I move the mouse to turn the monitors back on everything is fine.

This seems to be a small workaround for the windows detection problem. This still does not solve windows not correctly restoring a previous arrangement.

 

[Anteaus]

Just to clarify, what do you mean by unplug? I can understand the issues if your continuously disconnecting the monitor from the PC to use for something else (game console...tv..etc), but you shouldnt have any issues as long as all your cables stay connected. If you turn the poweroff on the monitor panel, what happens?

 

[elkinm]

Just to clarify, what do you mean by unplug? I can understand the issues if your continuously disconnecting the monitor from the PC to use for something else (game console...tv..etc), but you shouldnt have any issues as long as all your cables stay connected. If you turn the poweroff on the monitor panel, what happens?

The issue with DisplayPort and HDMI devices in windows 7 is that turning a device off or even changing inputs on the monitor/tv can be detected as the cable being unplugged.

I don't unplug a monitor to often, usually just to re-route the cable. I do turn them off.

I think windows is stupid in the way it detects monitors and breaks if something changes. But all I want to fix is the desktop arrangement.

If I unplug or turn off a display windows detects it and moves any windows and icons to other displays. It would be nice if it would leave the original icons and windows on those displays unchanged but that is not the case.

Now if I plug it back in or turn it back on, windows is supposed to restore the previous configuration and move all windows to where they were before unplugging and that is what does not work. The windows end up being a complete and garbled mess. Even if all the windows were on only 1 monitor that I did not touch the windows are distributed among all the monitors in some semi-random way.

Thanks again.

 

[elkinm]

To do some testing with Radmin Remote Viewer which allows me to see all my screens on my desktop on another PC.

I noticed that any time I unplugged, plugged in or turned on/off a HDMI or DP device the screen flashed black on all displays for a second. During this time, every display switched to 640x480 resolution for a second, then to whatever it was supposed to be set to.

I believe this resolution change is why all windows and icons always become messed up from this.

Anybody know how to stop this issues, or maybe remove or increase the min resolution from 640x480 to at least 1024x768 to limit the problems this issue is causing.

Thanks again.