choosing which monitor displays a program at startup

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeff

On a dual monitor system, is it possible to choose which monitor displays a
program at startup? If I put a shortcut to Internet Explorer in the startup
folder, can I tell it to start the program on monitor 1 or monitor 2?

Jeff
 
Assuming you have a shortcut to IE on both the primary and the secondary
display on your system hopefully it would depend on watch one copied to your
startup folder.
 
If you are using dual monitor setup provided by your video driver then it
will be an option within your driver utilities, which under normal
circumstances would be accessible from an icon on your task bar
(eg NVidia settings)
IMO allowing a program, that actually displays on your desktop, to auto
start can cause start delays and sometimes said program doesnt actually
function correctly due to the sequence in which other win services &
startups load
 
Jeff said:
On a dual monitor system, is it possible to choose which monitor displays
a program at startup? If I put a shortcut to Internet Explorer in the
startup folder, can I tell it to start the program on monitor 1 or monitor
2?

Jeff
Click to expand...

You don't need to put any icons on the second monitor. With a second monitor
as an extended desktop the normal behaviour for most, but not all, programs
is to open in the place that you used it last. In your example all you'd
need to to is open Internet Explorer as normal, reduce it to a window if it
isn't already and drag it over to second monitor. Close IE while it is on
the extended desktop area, whether it is windowed or full screen, and the
next time you run it IE will open in the second display.

A few programs (including Media Center Add-ons) insist on only opening in
the primary display. I've even run into a couple that always open on the
secondary display but they are quite rare. Don't know why, glitch in the
programming maybe. Sometimes there might be a setting within an app to
select which display to open on (ie. Media Portal) but if a specific program
doesn't open by default in the last used position you're probably stuck with
it behaving that way.
 
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