Question Swap identity numbering order between monitor and TV in Windows 10

[madbaz]

Hi everyone,
This is my first post so please take it easy on me. I will try to give as much details as possible.
I have an old Radeon HD6870 VAPOR-X edition, with two DVI outputs, two MDPs and only one HDMI. Motherboard does not have integrated graphics. My monitor is plugged to the first DVI and this is my main display with taskbar on. TV is used solely with PC and has only HDMI and VGA sockets. As soon as i connected TV to the PC it took over the number 1 identity and my monitor got number 2 assigned even though it still stays as my main display. In display settings both devices have been recognised by Windows with exact make and a model. When PC gets turned on, both devices show duplicated screen during bios splash screen, then main display stays on and TV loses its signal until all loads up. My AMD Catalyst shows the identities the way I want, which is monitor 1 at the bottom, and TV 2 at the top (I have them stacked up). Also tried connecting monitor to the other DVI output on the card hoping it will affect anything, and it did but not the way I would expect - either, one or the other display would be only active despite both still being detected, no matter how much i would play with OS and CCC settings. Of course TV would be still numbered 1 and monitor 2 even if only monitor was active at the time, so I am limited to one paricular arrangement with cables. That's it.
I have even tried to play with system registry as suggested here:
https://support.displaylink.com/kno...ndows-display-properties-identify-numbers-are
No joy.

Question: How can I prevent TV from becoming number 1 and make sure it is detected as 2 by OS?

Before i get question "why does it matter as long as you have them nicely arraged with main display where you want it?" - I use some software and emulators that play up with resolution and i would like them to appear on particular screen without loosing extended display feature. That gets on my teeth as they seem to use identity order rather than going by the "main" & "secondary" display, and i cant change which display they pop up on.

I have looked for the solution all over the net and could not find the answer. All the answers i found were always about making "this" or "that" a main display or drag "this" or "that" around with your mouse to make it look like it appears on the bench - Yes, I know all that. So does my 8yo daughter.
Here I would like to purely focus on the numbers assigned to those displays. So if anyone wants to say something like ""Put the screen numbers in the order that you want by dragging it. Tick the box "Make this monitor my main display" and apply."" - please don't, just dont...

Many Thanks in advance..

 

[Ralston18]

Read your post a couple of times and did some research.

Agree: there does seem to be quite a bit of "Make this monitor my main display" solutions when googled, etc..

What make and model monitors are you using and what TV do you have?

For the most part Registry editing should be avoided - all too easy to make things worse and even completely take a system down.

AMD Catalyst shows the identities the way you want them to be. Good - fair enough.

But what I am wondering about is what are you using (hardware, configuration, etc.) when the Monitor/TV numbers are not as you wish or would like to see?

Have you done anything with respect to AMD Eyefinitiy/ Display Groups?

Overall, I do not believe that the answer is within Window 10 per se.

Seems to be something missing.....

 

[madbaz]

Hardware:
Graphics: Radeon HD6870
Monitor: LG Flatron E2260 via DVI (main desktop on the bench)
TV: BUSH LED40127FHDCNTD via HDMI (secondary display on the wall above)
(I know, it's all proper old stuff ;D )

I used to have two E2260 connected side by side, so identity did not mater too much to me before, now one monitor has gone to serve in my daughter's setup and TV got promoted to add some "umph" to my entertainment experience.

Yes I did have a go with eyefinity briefly (I went through pretty much all the options in Catalyst to see what they actually do), but that resulted in having one heck of a long desktop right there. Cool when there is not much of a seam between displays of the same size. However, I would prefer to keep extended desktops (I can still have one thing on both screens if needs be, as long as it is in windowed mode), so I can have a full screen on TV going on for everyone, and still be able to do other things on monitor below.

Just came across an opinion the numbers are assigned when drivers are installed. I have checked and both were the same standard PnP Microsoft issue from 2006. I have downloaded an alternative driver, some PnP for LG from 2009 just to have a play around. Uninstalled one standard driver and put the new one in that place. Then installed MS one back and did the same thing for the other one. Nothing changed despite different issue dates and order of installation, so that's getting crossed off the list.

During my regedit adventures i got to to this point: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY
and I was hoping to at least see some details in there, but Properties for each display show "access denied" and I dont even have permissions to see the permissions despite enabling, hidden by default, the true administrator account and playing with ownerships from that level. I am very curious what is in there though.