Vista gurus: dual display, won't keep preferred settings!

Hi, all! Got a Dell XPS M1710 running Vista Business with an external Dell widescreen display attached.

OK, here's the deal: originally set it up with the default video drivers. Second display worked correctly, and after rebooting or coming back from sleep mode it would keep my display settings just fine (primary display as laptop, external monitor on left, etc). So I decided to install the drivers for the Dell widescreen monitor. After rebooting or coming out of sleep mode it kept resetting the monitor orientation, putting the external display on the right. Fine, whatever, put up with that: seemed like a small price to pay. Tried uninstalling the Dell driver, incidentally: wouldn't uninstall.

Well, in the last couple days it's starting doing it's own thing (literally). Powered up, and suddenly the default display is now the external display on the left (including icons and sidebar). Resetting primary to laptop is now the object every time I boot up, and the icons are completely rearranged. On my LATEST reboot, external monitor on left with MOST of the icons and sidebar is the default: some of the icons are now showing up on the laptop, even though it's not the default display on boot up.

Here's my question: any way to get this random resetting to stop?? It's really getting annoying at this point.

Thanks!
Jack

 

Dual Monitor Mode and Display Management on Dell Notebooks http://it.scu.edu/howto/Dual_Monitor_Mode.shtml


Try a multi monitor managment utility something like UltraMon
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=357&pgno=6

UltraMon http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/products.asp
MG's download link for UltraMon http://majorgeeks.com/UltraMon_d2069.html
UltraMon latest Beta (The Beta may be better suited for Vista) http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

MG's front page may have some others to choose from http://majorgeeks.com/downloads22.html