Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrchucklepants | Hacker News Reader

I think it depends on the connection you use. If I turn off one of my monitors connected via DisplayPort, Windows 10 immediately moves everything to the monitors that are still on. My last computer, with monitors connected via DVI did not do this.

View on HN

I actually wish my laptop did this. I constantly have issues with some windows staying open on the second monitor after unplugging them both from my laptop.

Sometimes I can't get to them at all on the laptop screen without forcing it closed and reopening.

That's a Windows OS issue and it drives me crazy too, I raised an issue for it on the official Windows 10 feedback site, will try to find & post the link for it later, can't right now...

FYI in Windows if you can give the correct window focus (via taskbar or alt-tab) you can move them between screens with [win] + [shift] + [left/right arrow].

The regular [win] + [left/right] for snapping to 1/2 screen positions will also move it across screens if you hit it repeatedly.

this is the workaround I use but it's super annoying. I have two displays at work but I switch the second one between two different computers. inevitably windows will remember the last location of some modal dialog and spawn it on the disconnected monitor, blocking the main application until I figure out whether it froze or there's a hidden dialog window on the other screen.

Alternately the old-school variation (works since at least Windows 3.11): [alt] + [space] to open upper-left corner menu, [m] to move, then [arrow keys] to move the window around.

Once you've started this process, I believe you can just move the mouse (without clicking) to move the window as well. This tends to be faster than using the arrow keys, especially at modern display resolutions.

My most popular SuperUser question[0] (as well as Googling) revealed that many people have this problem with DisplayPort connections in Windows 7/10, although Windows 10 seems to have patched the problem to some degree with a relatively recent update (within the last couple months) - my icons are still moved to HDMI monitors when disabling a DP monitor, but positions are restored as long as I turn on all DP monitors in rapid succession... and in the correct order.

[0]: https://superuser.com/questions/630555/turning-displayport-m...

pre windows 10 you could disable HDMI and DP handling of the monitor detect signal.

Sadly MS figured we all wanted to have to shit move around as soon as you use a KVM.

(Also, there's usually a 90% chance that windows will not correctly handle the monitor reconnecting without having to either power cycle the monitor or using the video card's 'really truly scan for monitor changes' feature.)

That is a software decision. The nice thing about DisplayPort is that now we can find out if the monitor is on or off and connected or not. It is software's decision to move everything away when the monitor is off but still plugged. I agree this is a bad decision.

The correct thing to do is likely to //ask// the user what they want, on one of the working screens.

If the alternative is waiting for 3 seconds, bothering the user is a bad thing to do.

They absolutely could add a settings toggle. This has been a huge annoyance since DP and HDMI arrived at the scene.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com