How to Swap Display Identity (Identities)

Anonymous
2009-12-03T02:46:30+00:00

Windows 7 - Display 'A' Philips primary display - Display 'B' IBM secondary display.  A shows as Identity 2 and B shows as Identity 1.  I want to reverse these.  Reason is that the cursor currently travels from display B to A and I need it to go the other way - due to physical location of displays

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Anonymous
2009-12-03T03:38:29+00:00

In the Screen Resolution window, under Change the appearance of your displays , click and drag one of the monitors to its correct location vs. the other one.   The Identity numbers don't matter.

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-01-27T07:45:42+00:00

    Click on the display you want as primary.  Then scroll down to "Multiple Displays".  check the check box "Make this my main display". 

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-12-28T17:25:50+00:00

    Agreed, the identities are very important. However I think we have to face facts. Even though this is clearly a software issue (Windows XP could change the identities and Linux still can) I think we will never get Microsoft to change this because it appears to be a design decision in Windows 7/8/10.

    They are aware of the user request (as it is nearly a decade old with regular updates from people asking for it to be fixed - basically since XP went away)...

    It will never be fixed because it is very likely a very low level feature and it may cause millions of bugs if they attempt to find every line that is affected and change it (I assume they make a reference to physical hardware in the code rather than abstracting it to a variable so every reference would need to be changed which is very likely impossible.

    Lesson to folks who write software (if this is the real problem): never hard code anything...

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-12-27T23:35:16+00:00

    In the Screen Resolutionwindow, under Change the appearance of your displays , click and drag one of the monitors to its correct location vs. the other one.   The Identity numbers don't matter.

    Yes the Identities DO matter! I have several apps that are rendered useless because Microsoft won't fix these issues!

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-12-13T17:32:25+00:00

    What you suggest is at best a work around not a solution say you have a 3 monitor setup as I do two HDMI monitors connected using a HDMI port and a DP port using an adapter but the 3rd monitor is a DVI monitor connected through a DVI port and that too is used only when I am using a 3D software like MAX or MAYA to give me extra work space and productivity however this DVI monitor is what is detected as my monitor 1 so every time I boot up my boot sequence and bios etc is on that now your work around wont work for me would it....... I hope Microsoft address this in future updates.

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