Before I found this forum I emailed Dell Support but no reply so far and this issue is driving me nuts!
I want to manually manage my own windows layout on this Windows 10 PC. But all steps I've tried, including uninstalling DDM thoroughly, have failed to achieve this.
Whenever I restart this recently purchased U2415 (connected via the signal cable supplied to 'mDP') with the on/off touch button, it displays a 'resized' version of the layout I previously set in Easy Arrange before DDM was uninstalled! I've even tried using Device Manager to revert to the Microsoft generic driver, with no change. Here is a screenshot. Can someone please tell me how I can recover the normal situation please?
* What PC model? * What video card or onboard GPU? * After you uninstalled DDM, did you run a registry cleaner to search for DDM remnants?
That is a ton of running apps...
* As a test, open the Windows 10- Control Panel- Administrative Tools- System Configuration Selective startup * Remove the check from "Load startup items" * Click Apply- OK * Restart Windows 10
If the Windows 10 normal layout appears OK, then some item in the System Configuration Startup tab is the cause of your issue. * Open the Windows 10- Control Panel- Administrative Tools- System Configuration * Add the check back to "Load startup items" * Click the Startup tab * Uncheck ONE item * Click Apply- OK * Restart Windows 10
If the odd layout appears on restart, the item that you unchecked was not the culprit. Add that check back, uncheck a different item, restart, repeat the process until you find the culprit.
Thanks Chris, appreciate having someone else on the case. But I do think it's already clear that DDM is somehow at the root of this very recent issue, not one of my scores of other applications. So I'd like to focus on DDM first please.
I assume you want me to answer your questions here, which I'd prefer. (How would I actually send you info 'via a private message'? Is that a Twitter address? I'm not a Twitter user.)
* What PC model? Intel Core i7 6700K (4.0GHz), 32 GB
* What video card or onboard GPU? No additional video card; Intel HD Graphics 530. Here's a check I just made to see if there were any obvious issues with that, which I recently updated: My Intel 530 HD status check
* After you uninstalled DDM, did you run a registry cleaner to search for DDM remnants? Yes, I used the Advanced option of Revo Uninstaller. But see my comments about registry entries elsewhere in this reply, as I regard this area as a potential culprit.
Can you clarify a very basic question of my own please. In the course of trying to resolve this problem, I've uninstalled and reinstalled DDM several times in the last two days. Obviously something I'd like to minimise. What is the distinction between that and simply using 'Exit' to close DDM? My assumption (read 'guess'; I'm neither programmer nor techie!) is that although closing DDM leaves all or most registry entries unchanged, the screen display on reawakening the monitor should ignore DDM entirely, as I want. Is that correct? (It doesn't, of course, but neither does uninstalling!)
BTW, I assume it's not possible to avoid the 2-3 seconds delay on restarting the display, during which it displays "Input = mDP" in a small window, on top of this 'shifted top left' result, shown again here: Initial display
My 24" iiYama displayed whatever it did before last closed, and that's really what I'd ideally like with the Dell. (Which gives me a superior display to the iiYama, BTW!)
The current status is that I have now reinstalled DDM, because with the 'uninstalled' state I have to resize and reposition windows. With DDM set to my 'compromise' layout, at leat that work is minimised.
Incidentally, although I have a 64-bit PC and chose the DDM via the Dell site, I see that it's been placed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Dell\Dell Display Manager rather than C:\Program Files.
Another aside: when I checked the monitor settings I found the refresh was at 59 Hz, so changed it to 60 Hz.
With DDM installed, if I look at the registry key Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\EnTech\DDM I see this: DDM registry key
Immediately after a U2415 restart, if I now open an app that was not open when I last used DDM's Easy Arrange, that appears at its usual size as i want. IOW. the same size it was at when last used (not while DDM was running). In contrast, if I open any window that was in one of the two 'panes' defined by DDM, that wrongly gets displayed shifted towards the top left corner with smaller sizes, as shown in my screenshots.
I'm hoping all of this will offer you or your developers some clue on how to fix ths please.
Later this morning (it's Thursday 13 September 2018, 0955 here in UK) I'll uninstall DDM yet again and repeat the registry check. They should, of course, all be gone, yes?
EDIT (doing so here, as my latest reply has not yet appeared):
You are looking in the wrong direction. If DDM isn't running or even installed then it is not the culprit. All DDM registry entries are in HKCU\Software\EnTech\DDM, but - again - if DDM isn't running they are meaningless.
When you did have DDM installed, you had it move and resize some windows - correct? When you disable Easy Arrange, or close DDM, or uninstall it, the windows it moved/resized do *not* get restored to their original position and size. You need to do that yourself, because many, if not most, applications will store their last size and position on closing regardless of how they got there.
And, as previously reported, exactly the same happened after manually restoring the windows to their correct sizes and positions. And the same even after DDM uninstalled.
I'll assume my earlier reply has somehow got zapped. I took no copy but here's a reconstruction.
With DDM closed I stepped through a typical 'close/reopen'. I had eight windows open, manually arranged, four folders plus my browser and three other apps. They had been opened and closed at various times. My screen before the U2415 close was this: Before close
After the reopen, when the input source message closed, it was this: After re-open
And the same after a second restart. And after yet another uninstall.
Could it be that my recently updated Intels HD Graphics 530 drivers may be the cause, despite the clean bill of health I got from the check shown in my earler reply Intel HD Graphics report
Has anyone been able to reproduce similar behaviour please?
Meanwhile, I'll now reinstall DDM again, as that's marginally better than the uninstalled state.
Too much missing info... Use DDM to diagnose the issue.
1. Install and run DDM
2. Go to your Easy Arrange settings and disable them by selecting the first "red X" layout button
3. Right-click on the DDM system tray icon and make sure "Auto-restore window layout" is UNchecked
4. Now arrange your windows the way you want
5. Turn off your monitor using the On/Off button
6. Wait 1 minute
7. Turn on your monitor using the On/Off button
8. Wait 1 minute
Presumably the window arrangement you created in step #4 is lost, right?
9. Right-click the DDM system tray icon, and select "Save diagnostic report", saving the file to your desktop
10. Paste the content of that diagnostic report in your reply here
I suspect that with no monitor (off, effectively disconnected), Windows and/or your display driver are resizing your open windows to fit a 1024x768 default display, but the DDM diagnostic report will bear this out.
Now: to fix this issue - or at least test a possible fix - do NOT turn your U2415 off and on again; instead use the built-in power management tools in Windows itself to put the system into standby and/or to put the monitor to sleep after so many minutes of no user activity.
Too much missing info... Use DDM to diagnose the issue.
1. Install and run DDM
2. Go to your Easy Arrange settings and disable them by selecting the first "red X" layout button
3. Right-click on the DDM system tray icon and make sure "Auto-restore window layout" is UNchecked
4. Now arrange your windows the way you want
5. Turn off your monitor using the On/Off button
6. Wait 1 minute
7. Turn on your monitor using the On/Off button
8. Wait 1 minute
Presumably the window arrangement you created in step #4 is lost, right?
9. Right-click the DDM system tray icon, and select "Save diagnostic report", saving the file to your desktop
10. Paste the content of that diagnostic report in your reply here
I suspect that with no monitor (off, effectively disconnected), Windows and/or your display driver are resizing your open windows to fit a 1024x768 default display, but the DDM diagnostic report will bear this out.
Now: to fix this issue - or at least test a possible fix - do NOT turn your U2415 off and on again; instead use the built-in power management tools in Windows itself to put the system into standby and/or to put the monitor to sleep after so many minutes of no user activity.
Correct, the visible windows had undergone their now familar shift towards the top left.
Your suspicion sounds right.
Yesterday I carefully measured the size of the top left area occupied by the re-arranged windows and got 1022 x 736, at position 2,2. 1022+2=1024 and 736+2+30 for taskbar = 768. But why would it do such an odd thing?
BTW, as mentioned up-thread one of the steps I took was to replace the Dell drivers with the generic MS version. It made no difference to the issue, and I left it like that.
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
•
56891 Posts
•
232143 Points
5996
0
Posted September 12th, 2018 11:00
* What PC model?
* What video card or onboard GPU?
* After you uninstalled DDM, did you run a registry cleaner to search for DDM remnants?
That is a ton of running apps...
* As a test, open the Windows 10- Control Panel- Administrative Tools- System Configuration Selective startup
* Remove the check from "Load startup items"
* Click Apply- OK
* Restart Windows 10
If the Windows 10 normal layout appears OK, then some item in the System Configuration Startup tab is the cause of your issue.
* Open the Windows 10- Control Panel- Administrative Tools- System Configuration
* Add the check back to "Load startup items"
* Click the Startup tab
* Uncheck ONE item
* Click Apply- OK
* Restart Windows 10
If the odd layout appears on restart, the item that you unchecked was not the culprit. Add that check back, uncheck a different item, restart, repeat the process until you find the culprit.
DELL-Chris M (old account)
#IWork4Dell