Has Windows Vista been driving you nuts every time you unlock the desktop on a multi-monitor system? It has been for me so I did some digging and came across a great post on the Microsoft newsgroups and found the solution. I just implemented it and it works flawlessly.
No more having to go into display settings and adjust my resolution and primary monitor each time I unlock or reboot my system.
Fix Action (Disable Transient Multi-Monitor Manager Task):
- Right click on My computer -> Select Manage
- Double Click Task Scheduler
-> Task Scheduler Library
–> Microsoft
—> Windows
—->MobilePC
- Highlight TMM in the center pane
- End & Disable the task via the action pane on the right
- Issue Solved
September 5, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Awesome, works great. This has been driving me crazy.
September 16, 2007 at 9:18 am
Didn’t fix it on my Amilo Xi1546 with Mobility Radeon X1800.
September 16, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Just what I needed. I was already thinking about buying a Mac
September 21, 2007 at 5:07 pm
thanks goodness this seems to work!
November 8, 2007 at 10:21 pm
This did not fix the issue with my compaq DV2419
November 16, 2007 at 7:49 pm
superb solution. its amazing how many fixes you can find online if you look.
November 27, 2007 at 2:10 am
Thanx a lot! It works! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
January 9, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Thank you so much…. that was the most annoying thing about Vista!!!!
January 15, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Shoot! Doesn’t work on my T60p ThinkPad.
January 16, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Works great for Gateway M685 running entreprise Vista.
January 17, 2008 at 1:29 pm
It worked for my Compaq 8510w with Vista Enterprise. Nice!
January 23, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Thanks! Worked Great on my Toshiba Satellite!!
February 2, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Thanks it worked on my Dell Inspiron 1720
February 9, 2008 at 4:32 am
Wonderful! This has been irritating me for 8 months… stupid Vista, run your life w/o your permission crap. Dell D820 and nVidia.
February 14, 2008 at 9:23 am
Thanks! Worked on my ThinkPad T61.
March 3, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Many thanks. Worked fine on my Dell Inspiron 1520 runnning Vista Family Premium
March 10, 2008 at 2:29 am
It had no effect for me. Still looking for a solution.
April 28, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Works fantastic – thanks a ton.
April 30, 2008 at 9:27 am
I’ve been tearing my hair out for ages with this, I didn’t believe it would work but it did !!!! Thanks so much, it has made my media pc usable. Sony AR51E Laptop
June 9, 2008 at 12:15 am
Thanks, this has been a real pain in the ass.
June 13, 2008 at 10:45 am
Thanks for the tip. Worked a treat. Pity Vista doesn’t save the settings so that such a fix is not required.
June 25, 2008 at 12:32 am
[...] After a brief search on the Internet, I found several references to the Transient Multi-Monitor Manager. This is an application that is started by Task Scheduler to make it easier for mobile PCs to reconfigure their displays when plugging external monitors into them. The workaround suggested in several places is to disable the task. An especially good article was made by netsaber. [...]
October 24, 2008 at 2:11 am
Works for me, Compaq NC6400. Thanks.
December 1, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Finally I have been able to configure my monitors the way I want them. It has been driving me nuts. I have a Compaq 6910p. Thank you for this article.
December 16, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Awesome. It’s finally fixed. I looked for solutions for this on and off for months, until I finally tried again and found this article. Make sure you reboot after fixing to test the fix.
January 14, 2009 at 11:14 pm
On my machine (a ThinkPad T60p) it turned out that the graphics driver was the problem. My driver was the ATI Mobility Driver from Windows Update, version 8.363.0.0, and when I installed the driver from the Lenovo site instead (version 8.383.1.1) the issue was fixed. The change history in the README mentions something similar – “Display position of the extended desktop is changed after re-docking the system.”
February 5, 2009 at 9:37 pm
lets hope this works.. my monitor allwayse just shut off whenever i plugged in another display
March 23, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Thank you so much.. it worked.
April 20, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Thanks a lot for publishing this trick. I am using a Belkin KVM USB FLIP switch and it used to work when I had XP on my laptop. With VISTA installed it drove me crazy till I applied the above and disabled the TMM.
Thanks again.
Jack
June 11, 2009 at 10:59 pm
This worked for me too. Thanks so much. It took me forever to find this fix.
July 30, 2009 at 1:33 am
Thanks – worked great – - Thanks!
August 6, 2009 at 9:34 am
[...] After some Googling around for the cause / solution, I finally found the cause as detailed here. [...]
June 28, 2010 at 5:11 am
Thank you for this! I did have to reboot for this to take effect but it has worked amazingly well so far.