Vista - Primary Monitor switching

Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup the
way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary and
my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary. Under
the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as the
primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?

Hi,

Have you tried rebooting? Any error messages in Device Manager?
--
freddy


"knucklehead" wrote:

> Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup the
> way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary and
> my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
> switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary. Under
> the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as the
> primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
> Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?

Hi,

I found this multiple monitor troubleshooting guide on the Internet:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro....mspx?mfr=true

Determine whether the guide has anything useful for you.
--
freddy


"knucklehead" wrote:

> Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup the
> way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary and
> my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
> switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary. Under
> the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as the
> primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
> Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?

Hi, again,

I've been searching the Internet on this problem, and it seems you are not
alone. Do you use an nVidia graphics card by any chance? A lot of the dual
monitor problems I'm seeing on the Internet seem to involve nVidia products.
Updating to the latest video card drivers, regardless of manufacturer, may be
beneficial. It's usually a driver problem when hardware doesn't function
properly, though there are exceptions. For instance, does you problem
usually occur when coming out of sleep, standby, or hibernate mode? If so,
that could be a sign of a problem apart from video card drivers. Just some
thoughts.
--
freddy


"knucklehead" wrote:

> Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup the
> way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary and
> my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
> switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary. Under
> the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as the
> primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
> Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?

Since you said this I remembered I had a "Physical System Dump" occur twice
on my computer last week. I wounder if this has anything to do with it. My
IS department is looking into this.

"freddy" wrote:

> Hi, again,
>
> I've been searching the Internet on this problem, and it seems you are not
> alone. Do you use an nVidia graphics card by any chance? A lot of the dual
> monitor problems I'm seeing on the Internet seem to involve nVidia products.
> Updating to the latest video card drivers, regardless of manufacturer, may be
> beneficial. It's usually a driver problem when hardware doesn't function
> properly, though there are exceptions. For instance, does you problem
> usually occur when coming out of sleep, standby, or hibernate mode? If so,
> that could be a sign of a problem apart from video card drivers. Just some
> thoughts.
> --
> freddy
>
>
> "knucklehead" wrote:
>
> > Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup the
> > way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary and
> > my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
> > switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary. Under
> > the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as the
> > primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
> > Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?

"knucklehead" <knucklehead@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C4144D85-76EE-4F2E-9F69-4639628E215A@microsoft.com...
> Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup
> the
> way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary
> and
> my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
> switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary.
> Under
> the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as
> the
> primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
> Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?

Did you take your laptop out of town with you? If you used your laptop
without the external monitor connected Windows had no choice but to take
your setup back to default and make the laptop monitor the primary monitor.
Makes sense doesn't it? If you can uncheck the "Extend the desktop onto this
monitor" for the external monitor... do that and start over. Might work.

It makes sense. I've taken my laptop with me hundreds of times before but
never had this problem when I'm back in the office. I've tried the external
thing but it doesn't work either. I've tried picking different setups in the
BIOS on start up as well. I've narrowed it down to being caused by a
"physical system dump" my laptop did on me twice last week. A co-worker on
site had the samething happen to their laptop as well. I'm going to try to
restore back to a date before the system dump and see if that helps.

"DanR" wrote:

>
> "knucklehead" <knucklehead@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:C4144D85-76EE-4F2E-9F69-4639628E215A@microsoft.com...
> > Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup
> > the
> > way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary
> > and
> > my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
> > switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary.
> > Under
> > the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as
> > the
> > primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
> > Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?
>
> Did you take your laptop out of town with you? If you used your laptop
> without the external monitor connected Windows had no choice but to take
> your setup back to default and make the laptop monitor the primary monitor.
> Makes sense doesn't it? If you can uncheck the "Extend the desktop onto this
> monitor" for the external monitor... do that and start over. Might work.
>
>

I figured it out. I went into the BIOS when my copmuter was starting and set
everything back to default. With my computer in its docking station it now
uses my monitor as the default and my laptop as my secondary. I'm assuming
it has to do with changing the display settings in BIOS. I haven't rebooted
to look at the change.

"knucklehead" wrote:

> Before I went out of town last week for business I had my monitors setup the
> way i wanted them for primary and secondary. A flat screen as my primary and
> my laptop as secondary. When I came back the primary and secondary had
> switched to my laptop being primary and my flat screen as secondary. Under
> the settings tab in the Display Properties window the 'Use this device as the
> primary monitor.' is grayed out for both and it won't let me switch them.
> Any suggestions on how to fix it or switch my primary back?