Windows moving around after monitors wake up

[mouser]

I am having a problem on my Win7 machine that I never had on my XP machine.

I have 4 monitors.   Overnight the monitors (not the computer) go to sleep.

When they wake up, some of the windows that were open on the desktop jump/move around to different monitors and resize.

It's really quite annoying.

Windows 7, Nvidia modern graphics cards with up to date drivers.

Any ideas how I might stop this from happening? Short of turning off the monitor sleep power options?

[Ath]

How are the monitors connected to the computer? HDMI, DP, DVI, VGA?

[mouser]

all dvi, except one displayport.

[Ath]

Well, with modern display-drivers and screens, it seems the entire display is inhibited when in standby/off, and Windows shakes/resizes all it's visible windows to the last, or the primary, awake monitor it still sees. And also resets the other virtual screens to something like 640x480 pixels.
I see this behavior on my dual-DP setup, where I leave the (work) computer running overnight, but turn off the screens to preserve some power. Any window I leave open is moved and resized to the left-upper 640x480 of my primary monitor
My current solution is to close all (well, almost all) applications, auto-saving their last window-positions and sizes, and re-opening them the next morning. Exceptions here are Outlook, that I minimize to the tray by default, and other trayed apps like SSC, that aren't affected, unless I forget to minimize them.

Haven't found a solution, other than to minimize all windows to the system-tray, to avoid this behavior. But, I haven't yet done a thorough search for this either

[skwire]

FWIW, I run dual monitors and I DON'T experience this behaviour.  W7/64

[Stoic Joker]

FWIW, I run dual monitors and I DON'T experience this behaviour.  W7/64

Me either. I just jumped from Win7 with 2 22" 1920x1080 DVI monitors to Win8.1 with the same monitors but they are now DisplayPort with a DVI adapter. I have T-Clock auto sleep the monitors on session lock (Win+L) and nothing ever moves.

The only time I have seen this type of behavior is if I've been connected to the machine remotely. Then all bets are off as to where any given window will end up. With the old Win7 machine being a bit slow it would put on quite a show as they bounced all over hell trying to find where to be. But again, that was only if I had been connected remotely which already has to force everything from both screens into one smaller (at the house) screen so it was rather predictable behavior wise.

[mouser]

The only time I have seen this type of behavior is if I've been connected to the machine remotely.

I do use a remote connection sometimes..

I think what i'll try is:
1. making sure no remote connection is open, and see if that makes a difference.
2. try changing the ont displayport connector to dvi and see if that makes a difference.

[Curt]

if the problems not have gone away, I would try to install a program like DisplayFusion (one doesn't have to change wallpapers just because a wallpaper-changer is included) or Actual Multiple Monitors from Actual Window Manager. They both offer you to create monitor profiles that Windows should obey.

[Fishous]

I'm also on Win7-64, 4 monitors, latest NVidia drivers, displays turn off 15 minutes, computer never. I don't have the problem.

1. Try setting no screensaver. If a screensaver changes the resolution, that could cause the issue.

2. It could be that the monitors are not waking up fast enough, you might be able to test this by cycling the power on the monitor before waking the computer up. It may or may not work.

3. If you're using a login screen when it wakes up, if that login screen is custom and changes the resolution, that could cause it.

4. The event logs might tell you something as well.

5. Do you have the taskbar set to auto-hide?

[Josh]

Mouser, I have had problems in the past where, if I remote in on a machine with a lower desktop resolution, the icons will end up jumbled on the actual desktop when I log back in at the console. That had me puzzled at first but I figured it out. The only way around it is to use a "Icon position saving" tool and have it restore the position after you RDP in.

[mouser]

Thanks for all of the suggestions, folks.

To narrow down the causes, I have replaced the one displayport connection with a DVI, so now they are all on DVI (a note to myself about the importance of using DUAL-LINK DVI cable here.

I will report on whether this fixes the problem.

To answer some of the questions above:
My screensaver doesn't change resolution.
I am using UltraMon to manager multi-monitor taskbars.
No login screen on wake.

[Josh]

Mouser, when you remote into the system, is the host system you are remoting in from setup with a lower screen resolution? If so, that will affect your icon placement when you remote in.

[mouser]

its not icon placement that's the issue (i dont have any icons on my desktop); i also use a 3rd party remote access tool (Radmin) that doesnt do any resolution changing, so that's not it -- and i never had this trouble with the same arrangement on winxp.  however the graphics card and monitor have changed and the use of displayport is new.

i suspect it might be what someone else suggested, one of my monitors not waking up fast enough (or too fast), confusing the system.  maybe displayport is affecting this as well.  we shall soon know because i just swapped out the displayport connector for dvi.

[Fishous]

Have you tried running without Ultramon?

[mouser]

If displayport proves to not be the culprit, i'll move to ultramon next -- but i've always used ultramon and it's never done such a thing before so i don't suspect it as highly as i suspect displayport.

[Stoic Joker]

its not icon placement that's the issue (i dont have any icons on my desktop); i also use a 3rd party remote access tool (Radmin) that doesnt do any resolution changing, so that's not it

I'm not familiar with Radmin, but I wouldn't rule out Josh quite so quickly. The icon movements follow a similar side effect pattern as the windows do. Even if Radmin tries to create a multi monitor view for a single remote monitor - which causes/allows you to side scroll to the others - it still may be needing to adlib some of the view's content.

and i never had this trouble with the same arrangement on winxp.

Remember XP's desktop was/is bitmap based while Win7 and up windows are all 3d objects, so the margin for error - while Radmin tries to replicate the remote content - can be a bit higher especially if it is at some point trying to convert it.

Have you looked at Radmin's support site (assuming they have one) to see of other people are commenting about this behavior?

[mouser]

So far changing the one monitor from DisplayPort to DVI seems to have fixed the problem.. Stay tuned..

[Deozaan]

Any update on this, mouser?

I've been experiencing the same issue on my single display setup since I switched to using a 4K TV as my "monitor". Somewhere during the process of having the display sleep and wake up, the resolution seems to get changed temporarily (I never see it lowered). So when the display wakes up, all my windows are crowded/resized toward the top left of the screen.

I'm connecting using HDMI.

[mouser]

I solved the problem by switching from a DisplayPort cable to a DVI cable.

[francis826]

I just purchased the ASUS PB287Q (4k @ 60Hz) and I am running into the same issue. I am only using this one monitor for now and unfortunately I HAVE to run this with Displayport 1.2 to get the 60Hz @ 4K resolution.

I'm running windows 7 Ultimate and have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti.

After my research, some monitors don't keep the ports "alive" when they are powered down.

As a result, when windows reboots or comes out of sleep, it can't detect a monitor, so it sets resolution to it's "SIMULATED" monitor registry entry in the key at;
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration

This can be manually edited to contain the actual screen registration of your default monitor.

Discussion: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/windows-7-movesresizes-windows-on-monitor-power/1653aafb-848b-464a-8c69-1a68fbd106aa

[mouser]

Great find, Francis.  Thank you for sharing.

[mouser]

Unfortunately this problem has come back with a vengeance for me after swapping out monitors, and none of the posted registry edits seem to help..
Anyone else find another way around this? I'm on Win7.

[Ath]

While swapping out monitors, did any if them end up being connected by displayport? Last time that was the 'cause'

[dr_andus]

This problem seems to have something to do with specific types of monitors (and not with the type of connection in my experience). At home I plug in two older LG monitors and even if I manually shut off the monitors, the extended desktops stay in place. But at work I have newer HP monitors and if I turn those off, my Win7 laptop disconnects the extended desktops and moves the windows back to the laptop monitor. I normally turn my monitors on and off just to help me focus on one monitor (and one task) when I need to, but I can't do that with the HP monitors as it's just too messy with stuff moving out of place. BTW, in both locations, I use the same connector types: one VGA and one DisplayPort.

[mouser]

I think someone is going to have to write a program that memorizes window positions before they go to sleep and restores them after they wake up since Windows is doing a bad job of it..