My main Windows 10 desktop workstation is a dual monitor setup. It’s set to fall into sleep mode automatically when I am not using it for certain period of time. It works quite well most of the time but sometimes after waking up, all previous application’s arrangement would lose their original position prior the sleep to wake cycle. All the applications would re-position themselves to the primary monitor instead of stay at their previous last known positions.
If you too notice this, know that this is not the expected behavior. Windows 10 should remember and resume exactly where you left off after sleep and awake cycle.
There are a couple of reasons why your machine might show such symptoms. The primary reason is that your graphics driver is outdated. That’s what likely would happen if you have upgraded to a newer Windows version without checking if all the drivers are up-to-date. Here are some resources that you can use to check if your graphic card has a new driver for your Windows 10.
If upgrading the driver does not fix your problem, Windows is doing one of the following things when waking up. One of your monitors takes longer to startup and “connect” to Windows, as a result when waking up, Windows only detected one monitor and all your application would then auto re-arrange to that monitor. When the second monitor made its way online there will be no application windows left to be positioned on it.
Another possibility is that there is a race condition in which the order of the monitor from going sleep to waking up differs from time to time. Thus, the same would happen just like above, applications scatter around.
The fix for those causes could be the monitor or cable themselves. If there are adapters involved see if using a native cable input without adaptor would yield a different result. If possible update both monitor(s) to be the same model. Give the above a try and hopefully, some of the tips can solve your issue from losing app position from waking up from sleep mode.
> there is a race condition in which the order of the monitor from going sleep to waking up differs from time to time
Yes I believe this is the issue, if you don’t have two identical monitors then and the secondary wakes up first, it causes this behaviour. A workaround would be great but I haven’t found one.
Hi
I faced the same problem, I think that happens when both monitors are not from the same brand and type or size. Simply switch the default monitor, Make the oldest monitor is your main display.
Regards
This is happening to me all the time. Both of my monitors are the same Benq but there is an issue with them… I had milion updates for all drivers but it’s the same…
nothing to do with graphics driver, this is rubbish. it doesn’t happen on a Mac. It is just another issue MS doesn’t care about
Nothing to do with a graphics driver? Care to expand your reasoning on that?
– Win 10 Pro updated
– GTX 960 drivers updated (RTX 30xx out of stock at all reputable vendors)
– Identical IPS 1440p 144Hz ViewSonics
– VESA certified DP1.4 1m cable for primary
– VESA certified DP1.4 2m cable for secondary (too far from desktop to use a 1m on this one)
I keep my monitors on a short sleep timer of 5 mins. If I catch it as it’s about to fall asleep, the windows are fine. If I come back a while later, they all shift to the primary monitor. I feel like there’s got to be a Windows setting somewhere to manage this behavior. My desktop at work has 2 crappy monitors with crappy cables, and they wake up just fine every time.
Same LG Monitors but one is vertical and one is horizontal, Windows 10 and Nvidia Drivers are up to date. Even tried doing SFC and messing with regedit and services. Tried another user and a new account. Still no change, the only thing left to is an erase and install. Because the vage steps above don’t help.
Same it’s frustrating. I have a 4 display setup, but since I bought 2 4k monitors, open apps always default to my TV instead of my primary 4k display.