How to Swap Display Identity (Identities)

To be clear, there is a difference between the "main display" designation, and the numbered display identities each device has.

While it is certainly possible to make displays numbered 2, 3, 4, et. al. the main display device, this does not itself address the identity issue. It causes a number of problems for many people's configurations, and in all these years Microsoft have not seen fit to address this issue in any Windows version. I had this problem on Windows 7, and I still have it in Windows 10. Any official response has alternately been (to paraphrase) "there is no problem", or when it is painstaking pointed out that this does cause problems that it is simply "too hard" or even "impossible" to fix at the OS-level.

NOT HELPFUL 

have you read the thread at all?  

The point of the thread is that some of us use (what should be) screen 2 to send the computer to a big screen (or projector).    

I have my main screen on a tower as screen one (and the main screen).  This display is hooked up DVI.  

My secondary screen is a plasma, hooked up via HDMI.  This display's input is switched between various inputs, one of which is the computer.  

HERE IS THE POINT:    When the plasma display is switched to the computer's input, it commands the computer to make IT screen one!  been through all identify, etc.  The issue is that my main display becomes display 2 when the plasma is switched to the computer's output.  Obviously the HDMI handshake is telling the computer that the HDMI is active, because I get a screen flash, but how do we tell the computer that we want the secondary display to be 2?

In my case, I wanted to use the external monitor as my main screen and use the laptops built-in screen for specific tasks. To do this, I rearranged the screens in Control Panel (according to physical positions - more for convenience than necessity ) and then highlghted the second screen and checked the "Make This My Main Display" box. Then voila! My start menu is no longer showing from the laptop itself.

( Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display\Screen Resolution )

Windows 7 Home Edition

HP G6 Pavilion

AOC 16:9 Monitor

I hope this helps.

Is this to suggest that there is a mechanism within Windows to swap display identities? For all my research over many years, I have only gotten the response that this is not possible, and this includes contacting various forms of Microsoft support in the past for assistance.

If something has changed and there is a practical solution at this point I would be ecstatic, but I also don't want to waste half of my day and half a day of some poor technician coming up with the same answers all over again because somebody tossed off a poorly considered response in a forum to a long-standing issue.