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Problem: When I connect to my pc at the office via RDP all the application windows I had previously carefully placed on either monitor 1 or 2 will be "scrambled". Either all applications show on monitor 1 and monitor 2 is empty, or they have switched 1 <-> 2.
Expected behaviour: When I connect I see all the application windows on exactly the same position and in the exact same size as I left them the night before.
I have the exact same monitors at home as I have at work: Primary 2560x1440, Secondary 900x1440.
Yesterday I tried switching the physical cables on the host machine hoping that the hardware order of the monitors was the difference. But this morning my secondary monitor was completely blank, not even the taskbar (which I had set to ONLY show on the secondary).
Somewhere there must be something to help Windows understand which physical monitor is which virtual RDP monitor is which RDP "server" monitor... Are there more options than switching the cables?
This one has been bothering me for a long long time now, I hope someone has a solution or workaround for me.
Edit I want to use both monitors, so I have checked the "Use all monitors" setting in the RDP client. For example I leave my mail and total commander on the right monitor, and visual studio and Firefox on the left monitor. When I connect to RDP I want to see those applications on the same positions and sizes.
I was hoping that by using the exact same hardware on both ends would help Windows in choosing the right settings for those virtual drivers. I guess not. I will give VNC a go, not sure if it will be fast enough on my current internet connection (will be upgraded this year). I will post back my findings. – Martijn Kooij – 2014-06-12T07:45:10.403
Aside from being slow as expected, both TightVNC as wel as RealVNC do not support my landscape + portrait monitor setup... My seconday screen is in portrait but both viewers render the contents flipped 90 degrees... So that's a nope. – Martijn Kooij – 2014-06-12T18:39:23.200
Yeah, you're kind of stuck in a hard place. So I'd say you may be limited to looking into a window/icon location save/restore utility as I mentioned at the end of the answer. A bit of a pain, but you should be able to configure it to save/restore via a couple hotkey shortcuts. Hit a key-combo to save the positions before you leave one location, and then hit another key-combo to restore them when you connect form the new location. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-06-12T18:44:19.697
I think it's a bit bigger that just window sizes/positions. It is almost as if my secondary monitor is not being recognized initially. Currently when I log in everything is only on the primary, even the taskbar (which I only have on my secondary). I think it's something like the initial connection only asumes 1 virtual monitor, and not until after connecting it detects and initialises the secondary... – Martijn Kooij – 2014-06-17T18:41:15.243