How to make two displays independent from each other (res probs)?

So, I have a Radeon Mobility HD 5470 512 MB GDDR3.
It is a laptop with a main display, a VGA and a HDMI output.

When I connect a display to the VGA or HDMI it works nice, on the secondary screen i put something on full-screen but then when I launch a game which is not the same resolution as the primary display, on the secondary display, it seems like most windows move to the second display, which is very annoying. Sepecially when parents watch a movie on the second display and I want to play a game on the primary.. then it, like, f*ks up. Is there any solution to this problem? (except setting the games resilution to the displays resolution, my laptop isn'
t the stronest one).

Here are two images visualizing the problem:
(Red vertical line is where the displays split)

BAD:
[img]http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/1381/69932176.png[/img]

GOOD:
[img]http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/2383/85450517.png[/img]

Change the resolution of the laptop screen to the games resolution prior to starting the game.

He's trying to separate the two so he can run a full screen game on the primary while something else is being seen on the monitor that was added on. The only option for that would be a program like UltraMon or DisplayFusion where you can extend one desktop onto the external display showing a separate app running there while suffering with the pc game running in a windowed mode not full screen!

In order to move the mouse off of the game to click on anything else like opening a browser window even the game will either stall or have to be paused in a windowed mode. Some Steam driven titles however won't stall but seem to slip into a temp hibernation if you are able to recover them afterwards to go check the mail or start up an app you have moved over to the second display before starting the game up however!

The next of course to stall the works will be how to mute the pc game to allow sound for any player? Otherwise two sound output sources will be competing for a single sound output source namely the onboard audio chip!

In other words while a game is paused that would somewhat free up sound resources for many but not all players or the game will have to be able to run without sound. In most cases however you wouldn't be able to have it both ways as far as any game running at the same time as a full screen video playback source. Only one could be in use at a time since you would most likely end up with resource conflicts depending on game and players used.

I know what he is trying to do and I gave him a solution to his question.
Ultramon or display fusion isn't required either.
I am sitting here at a friends house watching him play diablo 3 in full screen while watching a YouTube video on the second screen in full screen mode.

I do know that some games will start up and occasionally freeze a video that is playing on a secondary screen, as that happens on my system.

grasmanek94 said:

Zepher said:

Change the resolution of the laptop screen to the games resolution prior to starting the game.

Is there any solution to this problem? (except setting the games resilution to the displays resolution, my laptop isn'
t the stronest one).

...

The reason your open windows and apps shift is because your game is set to a lower resolution than the screen it is on.
Example, let's say your screen is 1920x1080 and you run a game that is set to 1024x768, as soon as that game launches, the resolution on that monitor drops to 1024x768 and the desktop gets resized and any open window wider than 1024 pixels will end up partially on the second monitor, because everything has to shift.

I suggested setting your screens resolution to the games resolution prior to running the game so nothing will shift when you run the game.

Try it and see if it works for you.

I made the suggestion earlier about running the dame in a windowed mode to allow for running anything else on the second display. The two programs mentioned both offer a Smart taskbar extention where anything open on the second lcd will see an icon on the taskbar there.