How to prevent Windows 8.1 from gathering windows onto a single display when sleeping?

Whenever my laptop sleeps, it gathers all my windows onto the primary monitor. How can I prevent this behavior?

I setup my workspace in a very specific way, and it's super frustrating to have all the windows gather unnecessarily every time I walk away for a break. (and no, I'm not going to disable sleep - not an option here.)

Windows 8.1
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro

Solution 1:

This old forum thread may be helpful.

Thomas51: After further research I found the root cause of the dual monitor problem. There is a task in the task scheduler called TMM (Microsoft Transient Multi-Monitor Manager). I disabled this task, and all seems to work fine now.

Josh: Disabling TMM worked for me too, thanks a million! [...] But when TMM was off, it wouldn't detect if I had one plugged in when I logged in or came out of sleep [...]

_Tux_: I found this problem to be caused by a registry setting created by the nvidia drivers I installed. It created a DWORD registry value in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\TMM called UseIViewHelper and set it to 1. I renamed this key to "UseIViewHelper old", rebooted and the problem is now gone. When I login, the external monitor resolution stays as it should and if I unplug it, Vista detects this and switches the laptop monitor back to be the main desktop.

And from another forum thread:

ATI has a control panel that allows you to change the monitor configuration. It appears that Windows and ATI were fighting over control, and ATI was winning. So, stop changing the dual monitor settings in Windows -- starting changing them in ATI, and my problems went away.

Also, these solutions worked for other people (from the first forum thread I linked):

Dannyboy888: Try switching the primary monitor to secondary and the secondary monitor to primary (or vice versa). It worked for me on a Toshiba Satellite running on Vista 64 bit. In Vista you can go to display setting --> advanced setting --> Intel® Graphic Media accelerator driver for Mobile --> graphic properties --> then, reverse the settings under display selection (primary to secondary or secondary to primary, in other words make display 1 into 2, 2 into 1 or vice versa).

Sparkle: The layout problem was annoying me too, my external monitor kept defualting to the right. I have a DELL FP1905 Monitor and noticed that the monitor driver was defaulting to the Generic PnP driver, then realized I never installed the driver for this monitor. Once I installed the Dell driver for the FP1905 display (including restart, and updating the monitor layout settings once more) it seems to work flawlessly now. Vista must save layout settings per driver type and only resets the settings associated with the generic driver.

So, here is what I would recommend:

1. Check your monitors' manufacturers' websites for the latest display drivers -- and while you are at it, check that your chipset and graphics drivers are up-to-date.

2. Check if your graphics adapter management software (e.g., ATI or nVidia) may be conflicting with your Windows configuration and, per the recommendation above, switch to using solely the proprietary software made for your graphics card.

3. Try manually editing the registry value for TMM, as per the recommendation made by _Tux_.

4. Try switching the primary monitor.

5. Try the troubleshooting step I recommended in my previous answer.

6. Finally, if none of this leads to a resolution to your issue, try a third-party window management software, such as Ignytion Windows Layout Manager (recommended by dennis on a related Super User post) or Actual Window Manager (recommended by coldblackice in a forum thread as resolving his issue) to restore your windows' positions.