Vostro 3670, lock/unlock, open/minimized windows move

Thank you for your message. Have you tried changing the resolution to see if the issue persists?

Uncheck auto arrange icon on your desktop

Type %userprofile% in the run command – Click on the view tab & enable show hidden icons

Open AppData folder – Local folder – Click on IconCache  & delete

For my reference, please click on the message tab next to your avatar– click “New Message” & search for my Dell username (Sreejith R) & send a private message with the service tag, registered name & email address.

How to locate the service tag

This issue occurred again last night. I'd let the screen saver timeout and lock the screen. When I unlocked it several hours later, all windows except the two Microsoft calculator accessory windows were resized to the same size, and stacked one on top of the other in the upper left corner of the screen. the two calculator windows were stacked vertically in the upper right quadrant of the screen, but the top calculator window was offset slightly down from the bottom on.

Unfortunately, there was not option from a right click on the taskbar to undo this. I had to manually drag the windows to where I wanted them, and resize them to what I wanted.

Today I will change the display resolution to the next lower resolution (1680x1050) and see if that fixes the issue.

Just tried changing back to 1680x1050 again, and this time the entire screen is being used, and the windows, fonts, etc .are larger as expected with the lower resolution. I'll suffer through this and see if my original issue reappears.

Well, I tried using the 1680x1050 resolution, but doing so doesn't fill the entire screen. I've never seen that happen before when changing resolutions. I couldn't see anything obvious that would allow that resolution to fill the screen. The whole point of using a lower resolution is to fill the screen with fewer pixels. If anyone has any ideas, I'm open. In me meantime I'm back to the top resolution so at least I have a full screen to work with. This really smells like a driver problem.

It appears that others have seen this problem in the past. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/36gb6z/windows_is_always_resizing_my_windows/

Since I'm using VGA (the Vostro 3670 has VGA and HDMI ports, but the DELL E2318H monitor has VGA and Display Port) I'm not sure their circumstances apply to me. I've also looked into the registry as the reference in the above link recommends, but I don't have any HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration\SIMULATED_xxxxxxxx entries. The I have six entries under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration, and when I change the resolution of my screen, none of entries change to correspond, so it doesn't look like this is a registry issue. At least, not where suggested.

The one thing mentioned in the links above that may pertain is the monitor going into power saving mode, and timing of when that happens may matter. I'm thinking if Windows records window size and positions before the monitor goes to power save mode, all might be good. But, if the monitor goes into power saving mode before Windows records window size and positions, that may be the issue. The problem is I just don't know enough about how Windows manages window position and size during screen locking and unlocking.

Thank you for the confirmation, so this confirms that there is no issue with the icon cache.

Please uninstall the graphics driver & use the native driver & check if the issue persists. Open device manager – expand display adapter – right click on the graphics driver & click on uninstall (Check the box that says delete driver) & restart the computer.

Have you tried using an HDMI – Display port adapter to check if the issue persists?

SreejithR, I followed your advice and uninstalled the Intel UHD Graphics 630 driver that came with the computer. So, apparently I'm now using the native driver which from Settings->Display shows the resolution (1920x1080) grayed out. Looking at the Device Manager, I see the Intel graphics driver properties shows "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)", which further confirms I'm using the native driver.

I'll report back here if my issue persists.

I have not tried using an HDMI to DisplayPort adapter. Looks like those are rather pricey.

Still have this problem. The only thing that fixes it is to change the power options so the monitor display is never turned off as long as the computer is on. Defeats the reason for having a power saving feature, but better than having to always have to rearrange and resize the windows. This is the first computer I have had which exhibits this problem.

We tried to reproduce the issue & could not find any issues on sleep, hibernate or restart?

Have you tried creating a new user profile to check if the issue persists? Try creating a new local Microsoft account by following this link & check if the issue persists.