How do I open a remote desktop session on a secondary monitor?
How do I open a remote desktop session on a secondary monitor (in full-screen)? It always seems to want to open on the primary one and I cannot find a switch which lets me choose.
Is there a known solution or workaround for this?
I don't know if this helps, but in my experience, Windows tends to remember the monitor on which the app is maximized. Try opening RD on the second monitor, maximize it, close it, and see if it opens on the second monitor when you open it again.
Here's complete guide from Microsoft on how to do it: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/665.how-to-set-the-monitor-for-a-remote-desktop-session-in-a-multi-monitor-setup.aspx
Try this:
winposstr:s:0,1,2142,150,2942,750
It worked for me
Open the RDP file in a text editor, find the
winposstr:s:0,1,xpos,ypos,width,height
Change the xpos and ypos in the RDP file and save it.
You can then have the window open consistently where you want it.
The other answers which mentioned editing the winposstr setting in the .RDP file seemed promising but I was confused by the explanation of how the position values should be calculated.
The TechNet article How to Set the Monitor for a Remote Desktop Session in a Multi-Monitor Setup has a good explanation.
By the way, the article uses clearer names for the positions, I think, that have been used in other answers here: "winposstr:s:0,1,left,top,right,bottom", where horizontal values are measured from left to right and vertical values from top to bottom.
As far as I can see, from the article and from experimenting with a RDP file in Windows 8.1, here's how to edit the .RDP file to maximize an RDP session on a particular monitor:
1) Determine the left and right edges of each of your monitors, based on their resolution and which monitor is the primary one. In my case, my monitors are:
Left hand = Primary, 1680x1050;
Right hand = Secondary, 1920x1200.
So the edges of the two monitors will be:
Primary (left) monitor: Left edge: 0, Right edge: 1679 (not 1680 because the horizontal position is 0-based, not 1-based);
Secondary (right) monitor: Left edge: 1680, Right edge: 3599 (1680 + 1920 - 1, since the position is 0-based).
Note that if the secondary monitor is to the left of the primary one, the left edge of the secondary monitor will be a negative value.
2) Edit the winposstr setting in your .RDP file to set both the left and right values to positions that are on the same monitor. It doesn't matter what those values are if the RDP window is always going to be maximized, as long as they are on the same screen. The top and bottom values aren't important, if you're just going to maximize the RDP window.
So to display the RDP window on my primary, left-hand, monitor I could set:
winposstr:s:0,3,700,0,1500,600
And to display it on my secondary, right-hand, monitor I could set:
winposstr:s:0,3,2000,0,3000,600
3) Edit the screen mode setting in your .RDP file to maximize the RDP window:
screen mode id:i:2
4) Try it out. If the RDP window still doesn't appear maximized, despite setting "screen mode", set the desktopwidth and desktopheight settings in your .RDP file to the same width and height as the monitor the RDP window is displayed on.
I am on Windows 7 and none of the above suggested methods worked for me. Mind you I was using a preconfigured RDP shortcut that I downloaded from Amazon EC2, which I guess is where the problem lies so if you're trying to fix this problem within a similar setup to mine here's the steps I took to fix it
- Run Remote Desktop Connection (do NOT use your preconfigured RDP session file)
- Move the RDP dialogue to the monitor you want your session to be appearing
- Click more options
- Manually input details (hostname, account etc)
- If you want to persist the fix so that your previously broken shortcut always works as you intended it to click Save As and overwrite the RDP session file that you want to fix
- Click connect to connect to the remote host
If you close the session and run your shortcut file the session should now come up in the desired monitor and the correct resolution (which was another problem I was having before, i.e. I could move the session between monitors but it'd be a pain to sort out the resolution)
Hope this helps!