Csdrhrt

Every time there's a prompt of some kind, or a dialog box, it's displayed on my secondary monitor. Here's an example.

1. 
   Win+R (Run prompt displays on secondary)


2. 
   notepad and Enter (Notepad.exe displays on primary)


3. 
   Ctrl+S (Save as dialog displays on secondary)

Why is it behaving like this, and is there a way to force all new prompts, dialog boxes, program windows, etc. to display on my primary monitor?

Honestly, I thought that's what the option "make this my main display" was for?!?...

Would it not be more intelligent if the program windows were displayed on the secondary monitor? In the example above, have the Run prompt and Save as dialog displayed on primary, and then pop that Notepad.exe window on the secondary monitor?

What controls this anyway? I know that Windows can remember the last location on the monitor where you had a certain program window, and then when you open that same window again, it would be displayed in same location. So I tried to open the Run prompt, move it over to my primary monitor, open a notepad from it, close everything down, and open the Run prompt again. It displayed on the secondary monitor again........

Try restoring the window, to it's normal size, then move it to the primary monitor. Then x out (shut down). Now Windows should remember where it last was. Then if you re-open it, then you can choose to maximize it and shut down again. Then it will re-open on the primary in a maximized window.

This worked for me when I noticed Adobe kept opening on my secondary monitor and I started looking for solutions online.

Yup, the "make this my main display" in Windows can't move prompts and dialog boxes over to the monitor you select. It is only able to move the taskbar and program windows over to that monitor. To see all program windows on that monitor, you might need to close the program windows first, then reopen them.

So here's what I did:

• Lifted my "primary" (i.e. "2", i.e. VGA) monitor and put it on the
  left.


• Lifted my "secondary" (i.e. "1", i.e. DVI) monitor and put it on the
  right.


• In Screen Resolution (Control Panel), selected "1" and ticked "make
  this my main display".

So now, both program windows and prompts and dialogs display on the monitor in front of me.

1. 
   Win+R (Run prompt displays on primary (DVI))


2. 
   notepad and Enter (Notepad.exe displays on primary (DVI))


3. 
   Ctrl+S (Save as dialog displays on primary (DVI))

Voilà! Set and done!

I had similar issue,but for the windows command prompt.
I had a secondary monitor which I use it for my development VM, So whenever I open my command prompt on my primary monitor, the window use to goto the secondary monitor, and the hard thing is when you are disconnected from the secondary monitor the cmd window is still not displayed in the primary monitor, but it will be virtually displayed to the secondary monitor, and you can only see that in the task bar of the primary monitor.

solution:

open the command prompt and right-click on that window, make the winodw-position values {left, top} to zero.
now close the prompt and open again, it will open in the primary window always even if the secondary monitor is connected.!!