Thinkpads Forum

I have a W500 and use the advanced mini dock with a ViewSonic wide screen monitor attached. The W500 is set at 1680x1050. The monitor is set to match. When I undock the resolution changes momentarily and then reverts back to 1680x1050. This ends up rearranging all my icons. What can I do to stop this?

I had a R52 with the advanced port replicator and this didn't happen as long as I opened the lid first, then released. I tried that on the W500 but it didn't work.

Any insight will be appreciated.

My solution has been to not care if things get rearranged - but I believe that this is a function of presentation manager. You could remove it. I'll bet that if you delete all of the other resolutions except for 1650x1050 out of presentation manager it will fix it. If that does not work - there are registry hacks that will take all of those other resolutions out of the driver. The downside is that if you had a projector you needed to connect to you would be screwed.

My answer: Desktop Restore

I keep this nifty shell extension installed on any laptop I use, and even on the desktops, and it solves forever the need to rearrange icons whenever resolution changes (whether due to this weird "feature" you mentioned, or due to the fact that I connected an external monitor with a different resolution).

You arrange the icons the way you want them, rightclick "Save desktop" and it remembers that layout for the particular resolution. At any point, rightclick "Restore desktop" and it will restore the layout saved for that resolution. This way you can have different layouts memorized for different resolutions / monitor configurations. Very handy, and IMO beats messing with the presentation director or registry hacks.

Thanks to both of you for responding. I'm going to try Desktop Restore first. We'll see how that goes.

dr_st wrote:My answer: Desktop Restore

I keep this nifty shell extension installed on any laptop I use, and even on the desktops, and it solves forever the need to rearrange icons whenever resolution changes (whether due to this weird "feature" you mentioned, or due to the fact that I connected an external monitor with a different resolution).

You arrange the icons the way you want them, rightclick "Save desktop" and it remembers that layout for the particular resolution. At any point, rightclick "Restore desktop" and it will restore the layout saved for that resolution. This way you can have different layouts memorized for different resolutions / monitor configurations. Very handy, and IMO beats messing with the presentation director or registry hacks.

Are you using Vista? I can't find it on my Windows XP Pro.

Strange.

I use it on Vista, XP and even one 98SE machine. Works exactly the same for me on all setups.