[Dx4win] Issues when displaying DX4Win on 2 screens

[Bob & Janet]

I know there have been other posts about windows disappearing, or not 
displaying in DX4Win, and I thought this information about our 
experiences might help others if they get something similar in future.  
The answer was so simple in the end!

Last weekend we participated in International Museums Weekend - we took 
a laptop and also a larger monitor so that visitors to the shack could 
easily see what was going on.  At home I set up DX4Win with all the 
windows that we thought folks might find interesting - most of them on 
the larger external monitor.  When I connected everything down at the 
museum and opened DX4Win only the windows that were on the laptop's own 
monitor appeared - the rest were missing, including the Main File - 
Preferences (& Exit) menu, so I couldn't even open that to check things 
out.  Eventually I had to solve it by deleting the config file, which 
advice was in the back of my memory from recent posts on this group - 
then when I reopened DX4Win I got the basics to start with and could put 
the windows wherever I wanted again.  Only problem with this was that I 
had to put all the info back into the preferences - grid location, Com 
port info etc, and I lost the changes I had made to the order of columns 
in the log window etc - and we wanted to get on the air as quickly as 
possible.

We also had a second laptop that we were using to copy the log file onto 
from time to time so that others in the shack could run reports to tell 
visitors how we were doing etc.  Same problem with that - I had set it 
up at home and an extra monitor was connected - when we fired it up at 
the Museum we only had the laptop, so we had the same issue of no 
windows - I used the same solution - delete the config file and start again.

When I brought all the kit home after the weekend and put it back where 
it belonged, lo and behold DX4Win windows had disappeared again.  Well 
I'm sure they didn't fall out of the car on the way, and I had more time 
to fiddle with it.  And the solution??  At home the external monitor 
sits above the laptop.  At the event it was to the left of the laptop.  
The first thing I did after connecting up was change the display 
properties so I didn't have to drive the mouse upwards to get to the 
screen which was now at the lefthand side - it isn't very intuitive 
doing that.  DX4Win remembers the position of the windows, so they were 
still where the monitor had physically been.  All I needed to do was 
change the display properties in Windows again so that the computer 
thought the external monitor was in it's old position, drag the windows 
all onto the laptop's monitor, then change the display properties to 
match the monitors to their new physical location, and then drag the 
DX4Win windows back onto the external monitor again.  Of course this 
couldn't work for the second laptop as we didn't have another monitor to 
connect it to, but the answer there is that if you are intending to use 
it on it's own somewhere, drag the windows onto the laptop screen before 
you shut down DX4Win and disconnect from the external monitor.

A bit of a long story, but it might help someone if they run into the 
same issue.  There may be a different solution, if there is I would love 
to know as it is so easy to forget to sort out the windows before you 
disconnect and take your laptop elsewhere.

Janet VP8AIB