Win 7 Dual Monitor power-off problem
I set up Windows 7 Ultimate on a dual-monitor system. Everything works fine until I power down the monitor. When I turn off the power, Windows begins playing the disconnected-device and reconnected-device sounds over and over until I turn the monitor back on. Worse yet, it moves all the windows being displayed on that monitor to the other monitor. When I turn the monitor back on, all of the windows that were on that monitor are moved to the other monitor. How do I prevent this behavior? I want to turn off the monitors and be "green" when the monitor is not in use and have the windows remain where they were. OS: Windows 7, x64 Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 2141, DVI connection Graphics card: GeForce 7600 GS Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
June 30th, 2010 4:20pm

Hi, The behavior is so strange. I would like to suggest the following options to troubleshoot the cause: 1. Ensure that the monitor is well connected to the machine. 2. Disconnect one monitor, test the other monitor and see if you can turn off monitor correctly. 3. Change the Power Management for monitors: 1) Click Start and type: devmgmt.msc in the Search box. 2) Open Device Manager and expand Monitors. 3) Right click the monitor and click Properties. 4) Click Power Management, enable “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”. 4. Update the Graphic driver to the latest version. You could download the latest display driver here. 5. Download the driver for monitors. 6. Update the security software and scan the whole computer to verify if any virus or malware is infected. 7. Clean Boot or Boot in Safe Mode to test if the issue is caused by software. Please note: we provide the third party link to download relevant driver for technical use only. There may be some changes without notice, Microsoft doesn’t guarantee any accuracy on contacting information. Before the issue is resolved, as a work around, please configure automatically “Turn off the display” by editing the power plan: 1) Click Start and click Control Panel. 2) Click Hardware and Sound. 3) Click “Change when the computer sleeps” under Power Options. 4) Then set the time for “Turn off the display”, 2 minute .etc. 5) Click Save changes. Best Regards Dale Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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July 2nd, 2010 5:39am

Thank you much. The problem was Win 7 installed the generic PnP driver. I downloaded the x64 driver for the card and it has fixed the problem. This is an old graphics card but the generic driver doesn't work. Thanks again.
July 2nd, 2010 7:47am

I'm glad to hear that the issue is resolved. Cheers~ Best Regards DalePlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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July 2nd, 2010 9:16am

Oops... The behavior is back! It stopped for a while, so I'll have to see if I can collect more information. The Device Manager is showing Generic PnP Monitor. I don't know if installing the driver changed this and it changed back, or it never was changed. More to come... Eight hours later... it's working again! In the interim, Win7 powered down the monitors on its own, but nothing else worthy of comment. Now, no beeping and it leaves windows alone that are on the second monitor. The driver still shows Generic PnP. Still developing... One hour later... I swapped the cables on the two monitors... no change. However, when I disconnect the cable from the Samsung monitor, the disconnect sound plays only once and the reconnect sound does not play until I reconnect the cable. Somehow, the Samsung monitor must be sending a confusing signal. Perhaps it only does this when it is warm. I configured Win7 to power down the monitor after a couple of minutes and this has never caused the problem. I figured it was because Win7 knew the monitor was powered down. Maybe the problem went away because the monitor cooled down from being off eight hours. But why did it work when I installed the driver since it wasn't powered off? I tried unplugging the monitor instead of power off. It has no power, so it should be identical to unplugging, but it's not. It is odd that Windows XP did not have this problem with the same hardware.
July 2nd, 2010 9:26am

I have tracked this down to an incompatibility between the Samsung monitor and Windows 7. For some reason the incompatibility is intermittent. Earlier versions of Windows do not have this incompatibility problem. The only workaround I can find is to set the power options to turn off the monitors in a very short time and trust Windows-7 to turn them off. Unfortunately Windows-7 has the same defect that earlier versions of Windows have where it does not always turn off the monitors after the specified interval. Thus, you must either wait the delay time to see if Windows-7 actually puts the monitors in standby (when you can switch off the monitor) or you must trust that it will work, a bad bet most of the time. The workaround for this second defect seems to be ctrl-alt-delete and lock the computer. Then it seems to reliably go to standby. Ideally Microsoft would fix this incompatibility and return to the Vista/XP behavior which worked. Second choice is to add a registry entry to disable the monitor disconnect detect feature so that it doesn't play the sound or move windows around.
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July 9th, 2010 6:51pm

Although at first updating the driver appeared to fix the problem, it later returned. It appeared to fix it because the problem is intermittent and goes away on its own from time to time. It happened to coincide with updating the driver so I thought it fixed it. IT DID NOT FIX THE PROBLEM. The problem is a DEFECT in Windows 7 that introduced an incompatibility with Samsung monitors. I suggested a couple of ugly workarounds, but there is no solution until Microsoft repairs this defect.
July 10th, 2010 6:51pm

I'm having a problem with Samsung Syncmaster P2270 dual monitors now. It's the same problem. the monitors turn off after 1hour as i have set it in the power options. But when they come on again all the windows have moved to the main monitor. And a few times windows has switched the setup to use only one monitor. And when they are "powered off" they keep searching for input signal it seems. In the top left corner they are constantly switching between "analog", "digital" and "HDMI", like it's looking for signals on these inputs. To me that seems like windows is only cutting the signal, and not turning off the monitors. My setup: Windows 7, NVidia Quadro FX1800, 2 x Samsung Syncmaster P2270 connected with display port. I have installed the latest drivers for the Samsung monitors (SyncMaster P2270(Digital) version 3.0.0.0 from 15.12.2008) And the latest driver from Nvidia, version 8.17.12.5981. from 26.09.2010 Any solutions to this?
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January 4th, 2011 4:12am

I have the same issue with a 3 monitor set up (two nvidia graphics cards) running on Windows 7 Ultimate x64. If I turn off the monitor on the right, it shifts everything over to the other two, but even worse is that it changes the resolution and orientation of the other two monitors!! So my 30" monitor resolution goes way down, and my monitor that is oriented in portrait mode changes to landscape (so everything is now sideways). I then have to go into the display properties when I turn back on the 3rd monitor which is now disabled and tell windows to extend the desktop onto that monitor. I power off all three monitors when I leave the area, so I have to go thru this a few times a day. I also need to move my sidebar back to the third monitor as it has migrated to the middle one. Display #3 (on the left) is a vertically oriented Dell 2005FPW (1050x1680) - connected to an nVidia 7300LE Display #1 (middle) is a Dell 3007WFP (2560x1600) - Main display - connected to an nVidia 8800GTS Display #2 (right - the problematic one) is a Dell G2410 (1920x1080) - connected to an nVidia 8800GTS http://clip2net.com/clip/m29510/1295104694-clip-72kb.jpg
January 15th, 2011 10:20am

This is an incompatibility defect in Windows7 and NVidia products that will not be fixed, since neither company is interested in resolving it with older products. My solution was to purchase an ATI monitor card, which resolved the problem for my system. Other possibilities are to use VGA on the monitor that causes the problem, or to downgrade to Vista or XP.
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January 15th, 2011 11:52am

problem solved. I installed the .INF file specific to the G2410 so it's no longer seen as a generic monitor when you look at it in device manager. There is no such file for Windows 7 for the 2005FPW but that was already working fine.
January 15th, 2011 10:46pm

problem solved. I installed the .INF file specific to the G2410 so it's no longer seen as a generic monitor when you look at it in device manager. There is no such file for Windows 7 for the 2005FPW but that was already working fine. nevermind, the problem appeared to be solved, but it was back today. problem unsolved.
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January 16th, 2011 12:20pm

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