For those of you out there that use dual monitor setups, you know what I’m talking about. You go from dual-monitor setup to single-monitor, or maybe a different dual-monitor set up and you go to stand-by and when you come back up, a program is displaying on the wrong monitor. You click and click the task bar and you see the little animation of the window going off the screen into no-man’s land.
Sometimes you quit the program and restart it and it works, but other times the program tries to be smart and remembers it’s last location, so of course it STILL shows up way off the desktop, invisible to all but the little green men running the computer inside the system housing.
Well, here’s how to fix it WITHOUT having to quit the program. Just right-click on the taskbar button and select “Move”. Then, (here’s my little ingenius part) use your arrow keys on the keyboard to move it “back” to the main display. For example, if when you click the taskbar button you notice that the window is opening up on some phantom left-side screen, use the right arrow keys. Just hold them down until the window shows up. If you don’t see “move” as an option, you might have to select “Restore” first.
Yay! Ze application, she is visible!
So, my question to you - do you use dual monitors? Let me know in the comments. I want to know if you’ve NEVER used it, or SOMETIMES used it, or if you’re like me and depend on it.
I can barely stand it when I have to work on one monitor. This is most commonly experienced when I’m just on the laptop and am actually working in a mobile capacity. Using just the built-in TrackPad or TrackPoint on the laptop is bad enough, so I frequently travel with a small mini-optical mouse. When I’m only able to use the single laptop screen, I actually feel less productive.
At work and at home, my laptop is almost always connected to a 2nd monitor. At work it’s a 21″ CRT through a D-View stand and at home it’s a 20″ flat panel.
I really *really* like the D-View stand from Dell - it elevates the laptop off the desk and optionally makes the laptop monitor a usable screen, so you just need to use a single external monitor for full dual-monitor use. And of course, when combined with the port replicator (aka dock) it gives you everything you need - USB, sound, monitor (VGA and DVI and svideo), network, modem, S/PDIF audio, parallel, serial, and PS2 ports.
That’s a sweet stand! There’s actually quite a bit to be said for having your dual monitor setup horizontally aligned. My home system has my laptop on the table and I actually use its keyboard (yeah, I know, I’ll reduce the life of the keyboard by doing this - really, I know. I work in IT for a 500+ employee shop and we get plenty of keyboards back after a year or two that just get shnockered because of people banging away on them instead of using an external keyboard).
Since the left monitor at home (the 20″ flat panel) is so much higher, the orientation ends up looking like this:
Which is hard to get your hand-mouse coordination to get used to. Plus it’s a little more difficult than you’d think to get your head to tilt up for the stuff on “that” monitor”. I typically dedicate it to the Remote Desktops MMC, where I can control any of a hundred Windows servers at work or more
If you or anyone you know uses Remote Desktops to control Windows servers and you control more than 5 or so, get the AdminPak 2003 from Microsoft and run the remote desktop MMC control panel. It lets you make a ton of listings on the left and as you click on them, it opens up the remote desktop window in the large main pane. It sure beats the heck out of trying to have multiple remote desktop windows open. Hint: once you install it, you can run it by running “tsmmc.msc” or make a shortcut to it. Then fill it out. I have other suggestions and tips on how to use this if you want to know more.
Plus, the Remote Desktops MMC lets you connect “to the console” meaning you get a 3rd remote connection without having to pay for Terminal Server licenses. Normally a Windows 2000 or 2003 server only lets two (2) remote sessions be active at the same time, even if one or both are active-but-disconnected. You get a 3rd one called “console” if you use the MMC version of remote desktop, letting you bypass the 2-remote-session limit and connecting directly to the console.
As we’ve previously discussed, I also feel much more productive with dual displays — and actually run a pseudo 3-display environment at work (the third display is connected to a separate system but I use the same mouse and keyboard via x2x).
I also have a Lenovo/ThinkPad stand very similar to that D-View stand. I used to just have the laptop sitting on top of a large Java reference book, but the stand is nicer primarily because it takes up less front-to-back space on my desk — allowing the screen to be closer while still leaving plenty of room for my external keyboard.
Well, I used to have that problem, but then I bought an awesome 30-inch widescreen monitor.
Ren, we, my friend, are the future. Soon all displays you buy will be dual displays. Well, maybe not.
Oh, and I’ll put your images up into the comment for you
Avi, oh hush. Still 30″ I would think is harder to manage than two separate displays. One issue is window size. I like double-clicking on the title bar of an application and it auto-sizes itself to its current home monitor. Can’t do that on a single monitor, right?
Oh, and I noticed, Ren, that you left Dual comments. as did I. Avi loses!
I chose for my second comment to come last, ya see?
And the display works well because I can open up two normally full-size windows side by side, and then have a space below them for extra apps I use like IM, etc. And if need be, I can maximize it to the full display which blows my head away.
The problem I have had when considering replacing my dual display setup with a single large, wide screen — aside from the fact that one of my displays is my laptop and I would just end up using it anyway so would still have dual displays — is lack of resolution. My current dual display configuration provides 3200×1600 resolution. That’s also the reason I still have a CRT as my second display — LCDs that provide 1600×1200 are still too pricey.
Avi, yes, I can see the allure of the large screen but I still can’t get past manually re-sizing my windows to just the right size. Do you have some app that helps with that? UltraMon is something I’ve used to help with settings for triple-monitor setups (I help support a friend with a Dell Docking station that runs three 21″ widescreen tilt monitors from one system - totally sweet!) but I don’t know if it helps with that or not.
Ren, another good point you’ve made. I would have made that point myself if I had been thinking correctly. I run 1600×1200 on my externals as well, and the laptop goes up to 1440×900 (it’s a widescreen LCD). Most people, when they come look at something over my shoulder, start squinting and asking “can you actually READ that?!?!?”.
Ha HA. Such small monitor. I laugh at you.
I resize them once to work on them - it’s almost like having them on a full screen for each of them. Once I manually resize them that way, they always default to it. I used to use Ultramon for my dual display and that did work well for that.