Windows 10 forgets window sizes.... and more

[bungeejumper]

Ever since update 1903, my desktop has been forgetting window sizes several times a day, and it's getting a bit annoying really. Has anyone heard of this?

If I leave the computer in sleep mode overnight, everything will be squeezed into a tiny letterbox window by the morning. And if I'm in Internet explorer (or whatever), and I click on a video, by the time it's finished playing all my browser windows will be down to minuscule proportions again and I'll have to reset them.

Then again, my Excel files now fail to auto-update any cross-links to other files, even though I've set them up to do that.

Finally, my computer is making frequent bleeping noises as if I were plugging/unplugging a USB device (which I'm not). And all of this has been since 1903. Hmmmmmmm…..

All of these are small annoyances, but if there's an obvious solution I'd be really glad to hear of it. Thanks!

BJ

[Julian]

Yes. It's been the bane of my life for the last 18 months or so although I now have a sort of solution that others might hate (I'm not 100% keen on it myself).

I've done a lot of googling about it over the last 18 months. The issue seems to be related to Windows (or some part of windows) sometimes failing to correctly detect the monitor resolution when it takes it out of sleep mode. The task bar at the bottom and all the desktop items seem to display correctly in "full" resolution but at the point when Windows is re-rendering the open windows on the desktop it at that point seems to think that the monitor has 1024 x 768 resolution which is why they all get scrunched up in the top left corner.

I leave my PC on 24/7 and have the power setting set to only sleep my monitor so my usual routine was to wiggle the mouse first thing in the morning to wake up the monitor at which point I would see the scrunched-up windows but for me it was intermittent, sometimes I would get a week of it not happening and sometimes it would happen most days.

The first solution I tried was to make sure my BIOS and graphics drivers were up to date, They were.

The next thing I tried is that in the registry there are entries for the default resolution that Windows should use if it is unable to read the actual monitor resolution. I set those to my actual resolution (2560 x 1440) and I thought that had solved the problem but it came back so I was just having a good spell. Unfortunately it seems I failed to save a link to the article where it described that fix but it didn't work for me anyway. As I type this I realise that it's possible that it did work but a subsequent Windows update might have reset the values back to 1024x768. I'm pretty sure I would have checked that when the scrunching behaviour reappeared after my fix but I can't be sure so maybe something worth investigating. Sorry I can't give you the link.

Next I simply decided to never sleep my monitor either but instead put on a blank screensaver to at least protect against burn in. In theory my plan was to remember to actively power off my monitor in the evenings or if I was going to be away from it for a while but in practice I kept forgetting so half the time I would get up in the morning to find that I had left the monitor on since 6:00pm the previous day and this started bugging me. This was however the time during which I was happy that I had confirmed it was an issue with bringing the monitor out of sleep because I never had any issues for the month or two when I was doing this

So finally my horrid workaround is that I still never sleep my monitor and have the blank screensaver but I have also enabled the auto-power-off setting built into my monitor to 1 hour so that it physically powers itself off. It's not ideal because at least on my monitor it takes no account of activity (it probably realistically can't) so if I am working I get a warning after 50 minutes that it will be powering off and then 10 minutes later it goes dead at which point I have to reach for the power button to switch it back on. It does however avoid me ever leaving the monitor on overnight. It's not ideal but I tell myself that maybe I could view the downside of it cutting out while I work as a positive and take those events as an hourly reminder to get up and stretch my legs before coming back after 5 minutes to switch the monitor on for another hour.

So there you have it, no solution I'm afraid but at least you're not alone! I suspect that at some point an update either in Windows 10 or in my machine's (Intel NUC's) specific graphics driver or BIOS might resolve the issue or maybe I just embrace my 1-hour-timer regimen.

- Julian

[Infrasonic]

Sleep and hibernate (to a lesser extent) have always been slightly flaky in W10 for me, from day one, not just 1903.
I've found that they are fine for short term use, and hour or two, but 24/48 hours and there are various corruption issues requiring a restart (cold boot) to clear.
If you have an SSD boot drive and fast boot (BIOS/UEFI) and fast startup (Windows) enabled, then the boot time difference isn't worth worrying about.
In fact even a cold boot isn't that much longer IME.

If you ever want to use fast startup as default but with the option to cold boot on next boot (for multi/dual boot options maybe) then just hit shift key and shut down from the start menu.

[PrefInvestor]

Hi bungiejumper/julian, Found this link with a bit of googling, worth a try ?

https://nucco.org/2018/01/fixed-dell-4k ... ws-10.html

ATB

Pref

[bungeejumper]

Hi bungiejumper/julian, Found this link with a bit of googling, worth a try ?

https://nucco.org/2018/01/fixed-dell-4k ... ws-10.html

Thanks, that does sound interesting! Okay, this monitor's an Acer rather than a Dell, and only some of the windows get resized in mid-session use, but you've given me something to work on. Ta!

BJ