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I like to have movies and whatnot going on in my smaller second monitor, typically while playing games. Sadly, some older games have absolutely tiny resolutions compared to what my main monitor can crank out, and running them fullscreen pushes everything around on the second monitor.

As an example, say I run an 800X600 game on my main 1920X1080 monitor. Everything not in that 800X600space is then shoved onto my second monitor, thus pushing everything that was ACTUALLY on that monitor off into some weird negative space.

Is there anything I can do to prevent this, besides playing in windowed mode? I can't SEE anything with the windows that small, sadly. My eyes aren't the best.

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  • Could you name few examples of games that cause this?
    – 3ventic
    Jun 6, 2014 at 14:38
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    @3ventic Almost any old game; I've played several that don't even have a windowed mode, and force resolution changes across the system. Makes for fun refresh when you alt-tab or quit.
    – Frank
    Jun 6, 2014 at 14:41
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    @3ventic launch literally any fullscreen (not fullscreen windowed) game in not-native res and it should be readily apparent. Though like I said in the below answer, I think the "sliding windows over" problem may be solved simply by using the rightmost monitor as the main one.
    – Ben Brocka
    Jun 6, 2014 at 14:50
  • @BenBrocka That might be why I haven't noticed it. I have the rightmost monitor as my main one.
    – 3ventic
    Jun 6, 2014 at 15:19

4 Answers 4

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Is your "main" monitor on the left side? I have a 3 monitor setup with the main monitor in the middle and have noticed that my left screen is fine and dandy even when the middle screen has a superlow resolution, but the right screen is doomed to a life of weirdness (the right screen hence gets the least use and is often used for console games instead of PC use at all).

Try rearranging your PC monitors in Screen Resolution so the main monitor is on the right and see if that helps at all. I'm not sure if there's any way to alter the "handedness" of the resolution screw up, but I've mitigated this problem by using the left screen.

I'm pretty sure desktop icons are basically doomed though--if they're on monitor X and monitor X is too small to hold them, they WILL be pushed away; I solve this by not having many icons the main monitor, personally. Also, if you're having problems with Steam Big Picture mode...I think you're just doomed, I've found no solution to it's weird shifting around due to lower res fullscreen, since it's tied to the main monitor after all.

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  • That's brilliant. My second is on the right side, while my main is on the center. I just changed the resolution settings to thing my right monitor is on the left, and I simply didn't move it physically. Now it's unaffected by the games! Brilliant! One click, no actual moving involved!
    – CRTFTW
    Jun 6, 2014 at 15:04
  • I note that this doesn't universally work - Geneforge 2, for example, will break any video playback on the second monitor - but it's the best solution I've found thus far, too.
    – ToxicFrog
    Jun 7, 2014 at 12:07
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I have not personally used it, but my brother bought DisplayFusion (now available on Steam!) because it's supposed to fix this exact issue.

It supposedly also fixes the issue where changing the resolution screws up your desktop icons.

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  • How DisplayFusion fixes this? I don't found any option for this.
    – Jorge Fuentes González
    Apr 27, 2018 at 10:02
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I ran into this problem now that my main monitor is no longer the rightmost one and my solution was to set my middle monitor to be the rightmost one in Windows' display configuration and use this AutoHotkey script to make the mouse wrap around my desktop so I don't need to go all the way left to reach my right hand monitor.

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I use a slightly modified version of this script: https://autohotkey.com/board/topic/112113-dockwin-storerecall-window-positions/

Here: https://pastebin.com/0MuUi5cQ - added ID support so if the window's name has changed since the last save (like switch to another tab in Chrome) it can fall back to id

You can save the windows' size and position before playing and restore it after playing or even if you ALT-TAB out from the game with a hotkey. The best would be if it was automatic, but still it saves you from resizing windows everytime after playing.

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