Solved Dual Monitors, Different Sizes; Icons scroll around on desktop

Since upgrading to Win7 from WinXP, my dual monitor causes issues with my icons. I have a laptop as the primary (1280x800) and a flatpanel as the secondary (1280x1024). In the Setup, they are configured to be offset from one another so that the bottom of the flatpanel is higher than the bottom of the laptop (which means the top is much higher, given the sizes). The Laptop is the left monitor, and the flatpanel is on the right.

When I'm mousing around on the laptop, and go against the top-most edge, the icons start sliding down! Since the screen is full of icons, the lower-most icons completely disappear off the bottom of the screen. They seems to slide until my mouse has moved to the "logical" location of the other monitor, then they stop.

If I click any single icon and drag it to a new location, all the icons snap back to their original locations.

What is going on here!

Are you sure it's not the whole desktop scrolling? You might have the laptop screen set to the wrong resolution, and your graphics card is scrolling the screen around.

This is definitely not what's happening, since the task bar doesn't move. I've also noticed that this behavior ONLY happens when there are NO open windows on that monitor. If I move all the open windows to the flatpanel monitor, then the icons scroll. if I move just a "sliver" of one window (so that it barely shows on the laptop monitor), then the behavior stops.

I may have an answer! Well, I say "I"...

Under Control Panel> Appearance and Personalization > Display > Screen Resolution > when I hit "advanced settings" it opens up a dialog box for the connected monitor that contains a tab called "On Screen Display". If I untick the box for "Enable Auto Scroll Function" the problem stops.

Click to expand...

From here: desktop icons scroll off-screen with mouse movement with multiple monitors

AWESOME!!! The location above was not accurate, but the resolution was dead one. I found this checkbox in Control Panel> Display> Change Display Settings> Advanced Settings> On Screen Display (tab). This is where the "Enabled Auto Scroll function" checkbox was located.

I have no idea why this is checked by default, because the behavior is annoying, but unchecking it definitely solves the issues.

Thank you!

No problem

First of all, fellas, your navigations are not correct or incorrect. CreepinJesus' assumed you have Control Panel set to start with Categories and CraigWU's obviously starts his with Icons (as I do). They're just 2 different ways of getting to the same place (I'm sure there are probably several more other ways to get there as well - that's Windows).

Also, the "Advanced settings" will get you 2 different dialogue boxes depending on which display you select before you click on the link, since part of the box has to do with the physical display and part on the display adapter. For example, in my case neither variation says anything about 'On Screen Display' or 'Enable Auto Scroll Function.'

Just an FYI for other viewers perusing this subject.

NashvilleKit said:

First of all, fellas, your navigations are not correct or incorrect. CreepinJesus' assumed you have Control Panel set to start with Categories and CraigWU's obviously starts his with Icons (as I do). They're just 2 different ways of getting to the same place...

Click to expand...

Good note. I always do it the 'click Start and type' way anyway, and I recommend others do, too; though it can be useful to know the long way(s) round as well!