2nd Display becomes primary when main monitor is switched off

Hi,

I have the following problem for a few weeks now:

I have a "main" monitor attached to DVI and a beamer attached to HDMI of my GTX-960 graphics card. The monitor is set to primary display.

For watching movies, I usually switch off the monitor, leaving only the beamer turned on. For a few weeks now, the beamer automatically becomes primary display when I turn off the monitor. It did not do this before. This behavior is very annoying, because it brings a black screen for a few seconds whenever I switch on/off the monitor, which I sometimes do while a movie is running. In addition KODI sometimes crashes in this moment and PowerDVD stops playing the movie.

The only thing I have changed at that time was that I manually changed the beamer to primary for watching a 3D blu-ray, but I changed it back when the movie was finished.

Does somebody have an idea about what causes this behavior and - more importantly - how I can stop this, i.e., keep the monitor beeing the primary display even when it is turned off?

Thanks for all ideas!
ai5g

ai5g said:

Hi,

I have the following problem for a few weeks now:

I have a "main" monitor attached to DVI and a beamer attached to HDMI of my GTX-960 graphics card. The monitor is set to primary display.

For watching movies, I usually switch off the monitor, leaving only the beamer turned on. For a few weeks now, the beamer automatically becomes primary display when I turn off the monitor. It did not do this before. This behavior is very annoying, because it brings a black screen for a few seconds whenever I switch on/off the monitor, which I sometimes do while a movie is running. In addition KODI sometimes crashes in this moment and PowerDVD stops playing the movie.

The only thing I have changed at that time was that I manually changed the beamer to primary for watching a 3D blu-ray, but I changed it back when the movie was finished.

Does somebody have an idea about what causes this behavior and - more importantly - how I can stop this, i.e., keep the monitor beeing the primary display even when it is turned off?

Thanks for all ideas!
ai5g

Hi @ai5g ,
Welcome to tenforums! :)
Are you using the WinKey+P to modify monitor projection or, are you simply turning the monitor off with the physical power button?

The latter, I turn it off with the power button.

Hmm, I was concerned that I am just too stupid... But now I feel better since even you guys here seem not to know the answer ;-)

However, any ideas how I could approach the problem?

I habe just noticed that the monitor disappears from the display settings once it is turned off. In contrast, the beamer remains in the settings even if it is turned off. Is there a way to stop the monitor from disappearing from the settings?

Another observation:
First oft all, thanks Edwin for the win+p idea, I didn't know this shortcut. If I use this to set "secondary only", this switches the PC monitor off, which is strange because the PC monitor is the main display (which should make the beamer secondary in my opinion).

Yes, but it behaves differently, as I said. However, I found a workaround. My graphics adaptor has two DVI-ports. Plugging the monitor into the other port prevents this problem.