Short version: When moving my laptop and sleeping between using different monitors, all my open windows are crammed into the upper left corner as if they tried to fit on the laptop internal screen resolution. I plug in and switch to the external monitor before unlocking my session. Is there a way to prevent this automatic resizing?
Longer version: I have a laptop that I move between two locations. I have one docking station, and the same kind of monitor configured for 1600×1200, in both locations. The internal laptop screen is awful so I don't use it.
- Location A: Docking station, monitor connected via DVI.
- Location B: No docking station, external monitor connected via VGA cable. In this location I have the laptop lid open for keyboard access but I don't use the laptop screen.
When moving from Location A to Location B, the laptop wakes up from sleep, displaying the screen on the internal monitor. I switch to the external monitor display (using Fn+F8 on this laptop), and only after that do I unlock my session with my password. However, Windows has crammed all my nicely arranged windows into the upper left corner as if it were trying to fit them all on the laptop internal screen resolution.
When moving from Location B to Location A, I have the laptop lid closed when using the docking station so Windows apparently concludes the screen resolution is 1600×1200 and doesn't resize any windows.
The laptop is a Dell Latitude running Windows 7 Professional.
Best Answer
Lock the console. Push the Switch User button. This will completely disconnect your user session from the console (keyboard, display, mouse, sound, etc). -- you can also accomplish this by opening Task Manager and disconnecting your own session under the Users tab.
Then when you unplug your external monitor or docking station, your user session (and the various open windows within), will be unaware of any resolution changes.
Then plug the laptop back in to a monitor or docking station at its new location. When you "log in", your existing user session will get reattached, and ideally it will only see the resolution change from the original to the new (without going through the intervening "small" laptop native display res).