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At my desk I use my work laptop docked with 2 external monitors; my primary display is 1680x1050. My laptops built in screen is only 1440x900. When I undock my laptop to take it to a meeting, all the maximized windows are automatically resized to 1440x900. When I plug it back into the docking station the windows are not restored back to 1680x1050. Even more annoyingly they still have the maximized flag set even though they're displayed identically to a non-maximized window placed in the upper left corner of the desktop. This means that in order to restore them I need to first restore the window to a formal unmaximized state, and then re-maximize it.

Is there any software available that would automatically detect the redocking (or related change in screen resolutions) and fix the windows for me? I have copies of both Display Fusion and UltraMon, but haven't found any settings in either of them to fix this problem.

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    +1 for a well written question. I also have a similar problem when I turn my television connected to my computer off, but have just been dealing with it.
    – MBraedley
    Commented Jan 25, 2011 at 22:44
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    @MBraedley That's what I've been doing for years as well. I've been going back and forth to a lot more meetings than usual lately which irritated me into finally posting a question about it.
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 13:51
  • Related: superuser.com/a/313251/71560
    – AlikElzin-kilaka
    Commented Mar 26, 2015 at 11:34

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I minimize and then maximize. Manually. Does the trick.

WinKey+M (minimize all)

and then

WinKey+Shift+M (maximize all)

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  • On Ubuntu and Mac haven't had that problem.
    – AlikElzin-kilaka
    Commented Mar 26, 2015 at 11:31
  • this workaround does not work for me on windows 7: the maximized size sticks to the previous resolution.
    – Guillaume Berche
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 7:41
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There's a program from Sysinternals called Desktops, it lets you create 4 virtual desktops, and its very slick.

I actually use the program for a similar purpose, its a little frustrating, cause you need to run 2 desktops, and set one to one resolution and the other to the other resolution, but it does work for most needs, and beats resizing all the time, its just a few keystrokes.

The other solution I'm working on, is a Powershell script/cmdlet that'll save my current window positions and size, and reset them when I change resolutions. But...that's a bit more complicated and I don't have a lot of spare time to work on it right now.

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  • That's ... not an approach I'd've ever considered taking. Can I configure it to show my applications on both desktops by default?
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Commented May 23, 2012 at 12:47
  • Yes, you can set up the desktops to clone each other! :) Another tool for AMD customers only that can do this, is Hydravision.
    – Brian Deragon
    Commented May 23, 2012 at 13:30
  • Have you found time to complete your powershell script?
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Commented Oct 10, 2012 at 18:11

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