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Standby not Disabled!
When running 2 monitors on windows 7 or Windows XP, I would like to be able to put one of the monitors at a time into standby. The method can be manual.
When running 2 monitors , the second monitor is not always needed, shutting off the monitors own power switch will turn off the monitor, that does work Ok. Problems with that are , the delay with the monitor logo at turn on, and the power switch is not very accessable, and the switch might not live forever turning it on and off so many times.
Using disable methods like devcon, WIN-P and Display, causes all the windows to properly move to the other monitor. While that is what a person would want to happen so they can get hold of the windows, that is not what I want to happen, and some things on the other monitor have to be re-arranged after a re-enable. By putting it into standby mode, nothing changes other than the monitor going into standby.
Disconnecting the DVI cable still can cause the system to (properly) shift all the windows over to the one monitor, just like any of the disable methods do. That makes a mess of the windows, and is so unacceptable, that I would prefer to leave the monitor on, wasting power and the hardware, when it could easily go into standby for some time.
For both monitors I am using a "MonitorOff" program that puts both monitors into standby, but I can not find a utility that will put only ONE monitor into standby for the windows system.
If someone comes along and suggests "ultramon" you must know for a fact that it will put One of either of the monitors into actual standby. And it does not really suit me to use ultramon, I tested it (it was nice) and I did not feel that it was a program I wanted.
The 2 monitors are running off of an ATI 4890 card, they are both hooked up DVI-I, the OS is both Windows 7 (primary) and Windows XP.
In addition it would also be interesting to have seperate standby activity timers, and follow mouse kind of standby changes, but any manuel method , shortcut, batch , tray, or gadget kind of operation would be a good start.
Psycogeek
Posted 2012-03-30T10:18:53.547
Reputation: 8 067
1What is the purpose of putting one monitor into standby? Because if you're trying to save power, then it's worth just turning it off since standby can still waste a lot of power. Unless you're flipping it on/off every hour, it shouldn't affect the switch's lifespan much. Tactile switches are usually rated for between 10k to 2M mechanical cycles and 100k to 5M electrical cycles. So even switching them on/off a dozen times a day, it's still likely to outlive the actual panel, power supply or other components. – Lèse majesté – 2012-03-30T10:35:53.743
1The tiny tactile switches behind the plastic junk, are rated at 1mill, but the plastic that hold the buttons together is not, and those tiny switches have been known to fail from high use. Also it was indicated that the switch is not easily accessable (as a desktop item) ,also it was indicated that the monitor has a logo routine. Add to that, there is not a way to batch a hardware switch :-) – Psycogeek – 2012-03-30T10:47:59.147
The standby power on ths monitor is 2-4 watts , the running power is 22-27watts. the other monitor uses 7watts in standby and 50watts when running. – Psycogeek – 2012-03-30T11:01:44.193
That doesn't seem like much by itself, but when you add up all of the standby appliances, it can be a lot over time. Just those 2 monitors combined uses 87.6 kWh of energy per year. In the UK, that'd be about 43.8kg of CO2 produced. And eliminating standby electricity use can save the average household between 6~26% of their annual energy consumption/bill and $3 billion/year for the U.S. – Lèse majesté – 2012-03-30T11:29:40.167
putting it on standby is a temporary measure vrses leaving it running continually. what would be the math on my intended 50% of the time standbying it, vrses leaving it on always? I believe i explained that there are windows running on it. It is in use, i am saving power, if i can quickly get it into and out of standby. – Psycogeek – 2012-03-30T11:34:48.530
Obviously it's a lot better than leaving it on continuously. I'm just making an argument for going fully off. But if that's just not practical for you, then sure, standby is still a huge improvement over running both continuously. – Lèse majesté – 2012-03-30T11:37:15.490
I have one of those under monitor Bank switches to turn each of the things on and off, even the speakers, and printers, and scanners, and the whole monitor set. My desk light is LEDs :-) So I do have full off covered. I also had to replace 2 of those switches, after only used ~3600 times. Preserving the monitors in any way, would save a lot of money I dont have , and power too, if they have to make another one. – Psycogeek – 2012-03-30T11:42:42.503
1If ultramon works, use ultramon, sounds silly not to use something you know works. – Ramhound – 2012-03-30T12:20:24.107
@Ramhound ultramon is suggested for every multimonitor question on the planet :-) been there done that, was not impressed. – Psycogeek – 2012-03-30T12:31:12.273
My research suggests that the only way to put one monitor into standby seems to be programs like ultramon, but they do this by essentially disabling one display in Windows, which will switch Windows to a single-display desktop. Maybe this is what you want, but if you don't want it rearranging your windows, and just want the physical display to sleep while the "virtual" display persists, then there doesn't seem to be any off hand solutions. – Lèse majesté – 2012-03-30T13:46:50.573
@Lèsemajesté Apparently the linux system is capable of doing it, so there is some Hope. I do not want to disable the second monitor, windows can already do that, and it is a mess, and takes to long to re-fix everything after. The other utilities for doing Both are quite simple and small, I assume they just tell the system what to do. This is just an expansion of that. – Psycogeek – 2012-03-30T13:55:55.027
2@Psycogeek: Yea, I mean, logically, there's no reason why it couldn't be done. At the very least, the second video signal could simply be re-routed to a virtual/non-existent monitor instead of your LCD monitor. And the virtualized display could trick Windows into thinking there's still a 2nd display to prevent Windows from returning to a single-display desktop. – Lèse majesté – 2012-03-30T14:03:40.800