So, I have the world’s worst power company. And surprise, surprise my power went off today.
Because of this, I have a UPS backup for my PC and primary monitor. The secondary monitor isn’t on the backup, so when the power went off, that monitor turned off immediately. I normally do a daily walk, so I decided I’d go do that while the power was out. With the primary monitor off, the UPS can power my micro PC for almost 4 hours, so I hoped when I got back in an hour the power would be back on and I could just turn on the secondary monitor and go.
The power was indeed back! But now I had a problem: Windows had somehow swapped my monitors, because when I clicked “Identify” the correct numbers showed up on each screen… but they were backwards on the actual monitor settings applet. No matter what I did – restarting, removing and adding the secondary monitor back via Device Manager, I just couldn’t figure out how to get the monitors to identify correctly.
I dug and dug through search engines trying to find my specific problem. It was not fun. In the end though, I found a fix and it’s pretty easy:
1) Unplug the secondary monitor from your PC and close any Settings windows.
2) Delete the following registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Connectivity
3) Plug the secondary monitor back in, and open Display Settings. The displays should now be identified correctly.
I don’t often go in to a lot of details in my “Geek Tips” because I’m assuming you are a Windows “Power User”. If you don’t know what a “registry key” is, you should ask your personal PC guru before messing with ANY of this stuff!