August 21, 2008: Vista and multiple displays: annoyance
This is bugging me. Recently I added a spiffy new monitor to my desk. My primary work system is a ThinkPad T42, which lives in a docking station when it’s here on the desk. I position the laptop so that its screen is beneath the new screen, so I need Vista to understand the relative layout of the two screens.
I can do that:
… but what I find is that every time the screensaver is invoked, when I log back in to the system, I see the screens like this for about 2 seconds. Then the screen flashes black, and my layout returns to:
This also happens after every sleep, hibernate, user switch, or reboot event. Essentially, every time I must login to the system with username and password, Vista goes out of its way to return to this setting. So I must manually switch it back to the preferred layout. I have discovered that this issue does not plague the builtin Administrator user. But it does afflict all other users, includng members of the Administrators group.
Thanks to Michael at the Vista Forums, I found a suboptimal solution. In the Start Menu, type Scheduled Tasks, wait for it to appear, then right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. The new (and much more complex!) Task Scheduler interface appears.
So now I don’t have to reset monitor settings after every login, but I still do have to reset them each time I re-dock the system, otherwise my second monitor stays blank. It’s progress … but it’s not exactly a full solution.
If you know a better solution, speak up!
Side note. Hey, Microsoft - you need to put more work into the new Task Scheduler. It’s too busy. Also you folks need to rethink some of those default tasks you’ve put in there. The ones with GUIDs for names? Come on, guys; you know better. And the ones with “Custom Handler” for an action? Err … right. What does that do, and how do I find out?
