Dual monitor layout randomly reverting in Windows 7

I have been using dual monitors in windows 7 for at least a year or more. For a long time I had it set up with monitor two over monitor one, but now I have altered the physical layout to side by side and want the monitors to reflect this. I have changed it to being side by side in the appropriate windows settings location and in the NVIDIA control panel both, yet when I open a new program (whether it is a game, browser, or media player) it changes back to the old over/under set up. Is there some way I could lock it to the side by side?

James7679, I dont mean to sound like a jerk, but did you read my post? If I did not click apply nothing would change and then nothing would be able to revert. Yes I clicked "apply" you smarty pants without the smarts.

Act like a smarty pants, get responded to like one. This is a real irritating problem, and your answer to an intelligently phrased question, that anyone with common sense that reads it, is to ask what common sense says has already been done.

Vartra said:

I have been using dual monitors in windows 7 for at least a year or more. For a long time I had it set up with monitor two over monitor one, but now I have altered the physical layout to side by side and want the monitors to reflect this. I have changed it to being side by side in the appropriate windows settings location and in the NVIDIA control panel both, yet when I open a new program (whether it is a game, browser, or media player) it changes back to the old over/under set up. Is there some way I could lock it to the side by side?

I'm curious... normally, new programs will open by default on monitor #1 in a multi-monitor environment (at least they always have for me, though I've always been an ATI video card user). So it would seem to me that if your monitor #1 used to be on the bottom (with monitor #2 formerly "above" monitor #1), and say now monitor #1 is on the left (with monitor #2 on the right), and the extended desktop is defined a horizontal spanning the two monitors arranged side-by-side, what exactly is the symptom you are describing when you say that when you open a new program "it changes back to the old over/under setup"?

What exactly are you seeing? Can you please describe it a bit more clearly? Is the window opening in a "phantom monitor 2 location ABOVE monitor 1"? Where maybe a "monitor #3" would have gone?? How do you know it's there, and how do you get it visible again on one of the two true monitors?

My suggestion would be to completely uninstall your current Nvidia software (drivers and control center and anything else) using Driver Sweeper. Then reboot, and you should now have two identical monitors providing simultaneous duplicated output, with Windows thinking you're in a 1-monitor desktop setup. Standard, stock, vanilla, generic Windows VGA driver running in 1-monitor mode, with the video card hardware handling the dual-simultaneous-output to the two connected monitors.

This should also hopefully delete whatever is left over in the Registry from your original top/bottom arrangement. You're once again back to out-of-the-box vanilla 1-monitor desktop.

Then reinstall the latest Nvidia drivers/software and once again use Nvidia's control panel to configure your desktop to be side-by-side extended with two monitors. This new driver install and desktop configuration should hopefully now make the left-right 2-monitor arrangement work.