Windows 7 moves/resizes windows on monitor power cycle

It is not a rare bug. I have this on all computers with very different HW, monitors etc., the only common thing is MSFT Windows.

People just suffer silently because they ignore it, think it should work like this, or they think they did something wrong. Very few people would know how to write about it e.g., here.

Thank you Michael.  That worked great!

Regarding the comments that MSFT has been slow in fixing this bug, I suspect that it may be more subtle than people think.  Also, though a lot of people on this thread (myself included) are experiencing this bug, there are believed to be over a billion Windows PC's in use worldwide. So, this could be a very rare bug.

*** Total speculation ***

From my own experience of the bug and people's reports on this thread, I suspect that what we are seeing is a function of timing between the monitor powering down for energy-saving and the PC going to sleep, combined with when the video card sleeps during the Windows sleep shutdown. When these things happen just the wrong timing, Windows gets a message that there is no monitor, so it switches to using the "simulated" monitor. Later on wakeup the video card tells Windows that there is a monitor again.

I suspect that there is this timing issue, as the bug only happens sporadically. This could make it very difficult for MSFT to reproduce in the lab.  Also, its not entirely clear what the correct fix is for Windows. If Windows detects that there is no monitor, it has to do something.  Currently it uses the simulated monitor. I suppose it could use the most recently configured monitor (if there is one), but it is not clear what other bugs that might create if someone is setting up a new server that they intend to run headless.  If they set the system up with a monitor, then intentionally remove that monitor, or switch to a KVM, there might be worse bugs that crop up if Windows pretends that the most recently configured monitor is still there.

So, there are a number of reasons why MSFT might not have addressed this:

* It might be affecting a small number of people (though it is clearly super-annoying for those of us who do see this bug.)

* It might have proven difficult to repro for debugging

* There might not be a cure that is better than the disease.

*** end speculation ***

Anyway, I am very happy to have Michael's work around.

So,  4 1/2 years later Windows 8.1 still has the same bug that I saw in Vista!

But - great work Micheal - your fix still works.

Many thanks!

Thanks Mr Tompkins, reading this post, ive read the whole thread, helped me fix my problem, I had loads of entries in the registry for the simulated monitor, even with a fresh install of win7. I was doing all the reg editing and getting somewhere then eureka! So I'm posting this incase it helps someone else with a similar problem. I did a clean install on a pc i am selling, i set it up on a KVM switch with my main pc. My monitor is an old 26" samsung TV connected via VGA, everything went fine until i installed the intel HD GFX drivers, after a reboot i had 'mode not suported'. I entered safe mode with networking and installed TeamViewer, rebooted and connected to the problem pc, it had set its display to something really low, outside the tv's range, (this was evident in the reg) bingo I thought, changed it to 1366x768 on the desktop and switched back on the KVM, hey presto I had my desktop back....... for 5 seconds! This just kept happening, after reg editing i got it to work on 12 something but i lost 1366x768 as an option. After remembering your post I wondered if the problem had been caused by me switching over on the KVM while windows installed hense it thinking it was headless, I did another clean install and I didnt switch over to the main pc until it was finished. I checked the reg and there was now only one entry in the simulated monitor, this was now 1024x768 instead of the 480 something that was there before. I have updated the HD GFX and it is now running perfectly at 1366x768, I realise this isnt the same problem as others here but this thread helped me so I thought I would post my issue.