Dual screen centers the active window

[Reboot]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on deploying Windows 7 Pro into my office and one of the problems I've come across is that, when a window opens on a dual screen system it opens centered on the two screens. This leaves one half of the window on one screen and half on the other screen. While this doesnt sound like a major problem, my test user is getting every non full screen window opening split between the two screens. Has anyone seen this kind of behavior before?

 

[dnorris]

I've had dual screens for quite a while, and seldom see that.
Usually the box pops up on the primary screen.

 

[chinga69]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on deploying Windows 7 Pro into my office and one of the problems I've come across is that, when a window opens on a dual screen system it opens centered on the two screens. This leaves one half of the window on one screen and half on the other screen. While this doesnt sound like a major problem, my test user is getting every non full screen window opening split between the two screens. Has anyone seen this kind of behavior before?

hi if you drag the pop up to the middle of either screen and then close it
the next time it pops up it should be in the middle of one or the other of the screens

brad

 

[Reboot]

We've tried dragging it and closing it in one of the two screens but this has not resolved the problem. One thing I will point out is that the software that does this is running in a virtual computer for XP compatibility. No matter where we close one of these windows the next one always reappears on the split between the two screens.

 

[Thorsen]

I have seen this, but only with Error messages and the "info" windows that show up when launching certain apps.

Is this happening with every non-full screen program or just a few in particular. the coding is probably saying to center the window by dividing total screenwidth and screenheight by 2 to find center of screen.

 

[Reboot]

This is happening with two programs that we have to run in Windows XP Compatibility mode. The programs are being run in non-full screen mode, usually positioned on the right hand monitor. Each time the user does something that would cause an error window or info window to appear it pops in right on the dividing line. All other programs running normally on Win 7 are not behaving in this manner.

 

[Thorsen]

This is because the code for the program is saying "display errorwindow A at position x,y (center of screen)"

Technically, actual code whould look something like this:

display errorwindow A at position x,y where x= 1/2(screen_width) - 1/2 (errorwindow_width) and y= 1/2(screen_height) - 1/2 (errorwindow_height)

or something like that.

I dont think, if you move it, it is going to remember the screenposition as its screenposition is always calculated as find-center-of-screen.


If you run it on a one-monitor workstation you wont see this. Are you seeing the issue if you run it as full-screen?

 

[WindowsStar]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on deploying Windows 7 Pro into my office and one of the problems I've come across is that, when a window opens on a dual screen system it opens centered on the two screens. This leaves one half of the window on one screen and half on the other screen. While this doesnt sound like a major problem, my test user is getting every non full screen window opening split between the two screens. Has anyone seen this kind of behavior before?

hi if you drag the pop up to the middle of either screen and then close it
the next time it pops up it should be in the middle of one or the other of the screens

brad

I have had this happen many times as well. Unfortunately Brad’s solution only works if the program is designed to remember the last position. Many applications just center the message not thinking about multi-monitors. Every time this happens to me I post or email a message to the author of the software hoping they will fix the software to support multi-monitor as this is becoming the norm.

 

[Zepher]

that usually happens when the screens are set for horizontal span vs Dual View.

In Horizontal span, if you maximize a window it will maximize across all screens, with Dual View it will only maximize on the screen it is on.

 

[WindowsStar]

that usually happens when the screens are set for horizontal span vs Dual View.

In Horizontal span, if you maximize a window it will maximize across all screens, with Dual View it will only maximize on the screen it is on.

That makes complete sense, and it should work that way, unfortunately for some applications it does not. Some software is programmed in such a way as it will split the dialog box between the screens anyway regardless if you are in dual view or not.

 

[Zepher]

that usually happens when the screens are set for horizontal span vs Dual View.

In Horizontal span, if you maximize a window it will maximize across all screens, with Dual View it will only maximize on the screen it is on.

That makes complete sense, and it should work that way, unfortunately for some applications it does not. Some software is programmed in such a way as it will split the dialog box between the screens anyway regardless if you are in dual view or not.

I've been using dual screens for 10 years now, and I haven't ran across any programs that do that. really strange.

 

[WindowsStar]

that usually happens when the screens are set for horizontal span vs Dual View.

In Horizontal span, if you maximize a window it will maximize across all screens, with Dual View it will only maximize on the screen it is on.

That makes complete sense, and it should work that way, unfortunately for some applications it does not. Some software is programmed in such a way as it will split the dialog box between the screens anyway regardless if you are in dual view or not.

I've been using dual screens for 10 years now, and I haven't ran across any programs that do that. really strange.

I have not been using dual screens for that long, for me about 6 total years, starting with Windows XP, then Vista and now Windows 7. Windows 7 seems to handle the dialog boxes very differently than Windows XP does. I can run the same software on Windows XP and it will put the dialog box centered on the primary monitor. However Office 2007 on Windows 7 will put the box on the secondary screen jammed against the left side of the screen.

As you can see from the screen shot, the dialog box overlays a bit on the primary monitor.

 

[Reboot]

I wouldnt say that I've resolved this problem but I've come up with a solution to prevent the centered window from happening. Since I'm running legacy XP software in the virtual XP mode I figured that I'd just let the user run a full window XP virtual computer. This way she can manage both XP programs in one window with all pop-up windows being centered in the virtual computer's display. Otherwise, no amount of fiddling with the display settings changed the location of pop-up windows for those programs when they were running in XP mode.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions on this! I really appreciate all the help I've gotten from the community.

 

[mpcrsc562]

It has to do with the way Windows recognizes your desktop as displayed by your videocard. I'm guessing with your card, Windows sees you have one big desktop instead of an extended desktop, which would show a primary display and secondary display. I had the same problem running two monitors with AMD's Eyefinity.

I'm not sure of the exact names or the specific steps, but in nVidia Control Panel, you would need to set up your display as an extended desktop.

 

[Thorsen]

I was thinking as well about Virtualization, as I use it for servers at work, but didn't know if that was a possible workaround for your setup. I am glad you had that available and it (sort of) solved your problem.

Also look into what mpcrsc562 said above about the extended desktop.