RDP Connection span mode

Question

My Work pc is Windows 7 Professional with 2 1280*1024 resolution monitors. My Home pc is XP Pro with 2 1280*1024 resolution monitors.

I have a RDP connection with the 'span monitors:i:1' switch that works fantastically - I connect from home to work and can use the work pc as normal (the Windows 7 drag windows feature is a bonus here!)

I've just added a 3rd 1280*1024 monitor to the home pc and would like to setup the rdp connection to span 2 monitors but leave the 3rd available.

Is this possible?

I've tried various options in the rdp file, but can only get it to stretch across the 3 screens...

Answer 1

Not easily. From The Old New Thing:

VideoReDo 19 Jan 2007 4:20 PM

I'm running a 3 monitor system, all 1280 x 1024. If I /span to another machine the remote desktop occupies all 3 displays. What I really would like to do is have the /span work across 2 displays, leaving the 3rd monitor displaying windows from the host machine (email, IM, etc).

Was able to simulate this by disabling the 3rd monitor, starting mstsc /span, and then re-enabling the 3rd monitor. Works great, but its a pain to setup each time.

Does anyone know a way to have mstsc span a limited number of monitors? Using /w and /h work OK, but then I don't get the nice little title bar like you do with the /span.

All in all though, the /span is a significant improvment over previous releases.

Answer 2

a. Tick the option “use all monitors for the remote session” in remote desktop client display option. b. use the “/multimon” switch on the mstsc.exe command line. mstsc.exe /multimon c. add “use multimon:i:1” to the RDP file.

advantage using multimon option over span option :

With true multimon support, the client-side monitors can be arranged in any order and can be of any resolution.

Since a span mode remote session is essentially a single-monitor session, if a window in the remote desktop is maximized, it spans across all the monitors. With true multimon support, a window will only maximize to the extent of the containing monitor.

If an application queries for the number of monitors inside a span-mode session, it will find only one monitor, whereas it will find as many monitors as are actually present on the client system when using true multimon RDP. This difference can change the behavior of applications such as PowerPoint.

source: http://www.nextofwindows.com/how-to-use-dual-monitors-in-remote-desktop-session-on-windows-7/

look at this too : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2009/07/01/using-multiple-monitors-in-remote-desktop-session.aspx