Desktop icons moved to secondary display

I have a dual monitor setup, and it's been working fine for years... suddenly, about a week ago, it started a peculiar habit of moving all my desktop icons to the secondary display. I can't work out what triggers it - it just seems to happen every now and then for no apparent reason; suddenly I see them all over there. I drag them back (they retain their relative positions), and carry on... til it happens again.

I tried deleting my desktop.ini file, but that didn't help.

I am not aware of any updates prior to this happening. The last Windows update was last month, weeks before this started happening.

It isn't that my primary ad secondary displays have swapped - icons aside, everything else is as was with regards that, and both Windows settings and the NVIDIA settings still show them configured as was.

[edit] -ha! "I can't work out what triggers it" - that's 'cos I'm an idiot. Of course I can: it happens whenever I turn the primary screen off then on again. On coming back on, the icons have shifted to the secondary one.

Any ideas? How can I stop this happening?

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Answer
Answer

Hello,

Powering off the computer does not cause the monitor configurations to change. However, by "powering off", do you mean pressing the power button on the first monitor (or unplugging the first monitor)? If so, that caused the monitor configurations to change.

Generally, there is no need to manually power off the monitor as modern monitors use little power in sleep mode.

Best Regards,

Sheng G. - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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Last updated March 26, 2025 Views 142 Applies to: