Autodetection of hotplugged/unplugged monitor no longer works

When I plug in or unplug my external display to my laptop, my display options no longer automatically reconfigure as they used to do. Now if I unplug the monitor, Windows acts as if it's still there, and windows that were on the monitor stay offscreen (as does the cursor, if that's where it was). I can manually move the cursor back, right-click load graphics properties and make changes OR do an F-key combo to move everything back on the laptop screen OR program a hotkey but these are all pretty annoying for one reason or another.

Any ideas about the cause? Unfortunately this must have started happening sometime in the last two weeks--at the same time as I made a load of major computer changes. However this did NOT include a graphics driver change (my graphics driver is current). At this point I feel it could be anything, but I'm wondering if it could be a recent BIOS update I did that HP recommended.

By way of troubleshooting I did run Windows in safe mode with ONLY the "ATI Catalyst" and "AMD External Events utility" running on top of the basic services, in case a newly installed service was stealing hotplugging messages, but that didn't do anything. I've also gone exhaustively through my graphics driver settings to make sure everything there looks correct. No luck. Any ideas?

Hello slickh Welcome to the Seven Forums!

When you go to plug in or unplug the monitor you aded on is the laptop on or turned off completely? If you didn't shut it down using the shutdown option in Windows to power down fully before unplugging the monitor that would be one immediate concern.

The second item for why things can open on the part of the display you can't see is controlled by the display setting for dual monitors once Windows has detected a second one present. If you set the display to extend the desktop over to a second monitor that same setting would still be in use with or without the monitor being plugged in.

With displays you shouldn't be hot swapping to start with. The problem is now seeing an error in display recognition since you were plugging and unplugging the external monitor while booted in Windows rather then shutting down first.

The first thing to try would be removing all video drivers so that Windows is forced to reset itself back to the default vga set. You will want to have the latest correct driver set downloaded and saved to a folder first however. This will bring you back to the factory one only display setting.

In sense you try simply rolling the drivers back for the reset. Once the laptop sees a restart to remove them and later another restart once you reinstall the drivers fresh you should be able to shut down and add the monitor back again and allow Windows to detect it fresh.

Unlike usb devices that you can simply plug and unplug display settings are retained by new profiles. Before unplugging the external lcd you would need to change the display settings back to the single display only. This will prevent running into the same problem.