Question Turning monitors off in a multi-screen setup.

[Josserhamon]

Ok, I'll try to explain it in detail. I've had BenQ XL2420t for years now and just bought a BenQ Zowie XL2411k for a dual screen setup. Haven't tried using multiple screens before, so I'm still pretty new to this. 2420t is connected via DVI/D, while 2411k through DisplayPort. Both are connected to the same GPU. The setup works fine until I try to turn one of them off... If I press the button on the screen to turn 2420t off (in case I want to clean it or just leave it off for the night) - everything is fine. It goes black and it doesn't affect anything, the apps that were on it still stay on it, I just can't see them. This is the way I expect it to work. However, if I do the same on 2411k - not only does it go black, but all the apps that were on it immediately appear on the other screen, and Windows/GPU stops even recognizing the screen is there till I turn it back on. And then when I DO turn it back on - I have to manually move all the apps/windows over there again. That's a lot of labor for just wanting to clear the screen...
Sooo... Anyone has any idea why that may happen? And any workarounds I could use?

 

[bill001g]

I don't think I ever tried a multimonitor setup using DVI/D. I suspect the computer does not know you turned off the monitor.

Mine do exactly what you describe when you turn them off. It seems like this is a windows "feature" and you have to live with it.

 

[Josserhamon]

I don't think I ever tried a multimonitor setup using DVI/D. I suspect the computer does not know you turned off the monitor.

Mine do exactly what you describe when you turn them off. It seems like this is a windows "feature" and you have to live with it.

OK, so I googled it a bit, it does indeed seem to be a DisplayPort issue. Whenever a monitor is turned off - it sends the "cable disconnected" signal to the GPU. It doesn't do that through DVI though. And ig on some monitors you can turn that on or off optionally, but not on mine, unfortunately. Some solutions I found are to use Wizmo to turn off my monitors at night, which just turns them off in Windows without disconnecting them. But for cleaning... No luck so far, but I think there is some software that lets you save your multi-screen windows even after disconnecting both screens. I gotta look that up...