At work I got Windows 11 24H2. It has a bug, known from september 2024, that resizes all the windows in a tiny corner.
Basically, when the screen shuts off for standby, Windows thinks the resolution now is no more 3840x2160 but 640x480. EVERYTHING gets resized in the top left corner at 640x480 and it’s ULTRA INFURIATING
Because microsoft took 3 years to fix the taskbar and 4 years to fix the “restore explorer windows at boot” checkbox, I’m not confident that they will fix this issue in this decade, and I must find a solution, or i will become crazy.
Workarounds tried:
- using fancywm - every time i wake up screen i need to wait 10 seconds to see all the windows rearranging and resizing and it’s still infuriating.
- disabling monitor timeout and replacing it with a screensaver - I’m at work and group policy mandate monitor timeout at 5 minutes
- updating the AMD drivers
- uninstalling 24H2 - the admin removed the uninstall files, i can’t revert to previous version *uninstalling powertoys in the chance if it was caused by fancyzones
- changing UI scale from 150% to 100%
What I did not try:
- replace the displayport cable with a hdmi one (but it should have only 30hz refresh rate in that case)
- use a dummy video adapter
- use a lower resolution
- wipe and reinstall everything, i have too many stuff with too many settings
A workaround that you may not have considered is stopping the monitor from going to standby in the first place. If you are able, you can use a program called Caffeine to keep your PC unlocked.
This won’t stop the problem when you have to lock the PC, but at least when you are there it shouldn’t happen.
I have nosy coworkers and I ideally like to lock the station as soon as possible (especially when I forget bitwarden open…), an anyway I have an IR windows hello camera that unlocks the screen when I sit down
Have you raised the issue with your company IT department? You mention several solutions that you can’t implement because the admin has removed the capability for you to do it yourself, but it’s their job to fix this for you.
wipe and reinstall everything, i have too many stuff with too many settings
Also do yourself a favor and back up your data and setting before something catastrophic happens.
Either way:
- Run sfc /scannow in elevated command prompt.
- Use ddu (display driver uninstaller) to remove GPU driver and reinstall. Trust, DDU can and has fixed obscure display errors for me.
- Try this registry edit or the ninth answer from this link
- Reset windows. It’s possible to do a soft reinstall and keep files.
It would be worth eliminating the cable first imo. Also reinstalls sound harder than they are. Even with a bunch of setting it usually only take me an hour or two these days and all it takes is shit starting to clutter or low space and I’ll nuke everything. Shit like ninite/Chris TTs winutils speeds it up a lot.
I think you’re mostly dealing with the consequences of DisplayPort monitors being considered disconnected entirely when off. I tried a display dummy adapter once, and it wouldn’t go above 1080p, plus it didn’t completely solve the issue.
It’s really not an easy problem to solve. Using only HDMI all the time technically works, but very few computers offer more than 1 HDMI port.
A few ideas:
- Have you tried checking or unchecking the checkbox “Remember window locations based on monitor connections”?
- maybe this is the result of Windows putting all your windows on a screen with weird settings when the main one is off. Is this a laptop whose main screen you’re not using for example? Is there anything else that could be considered a “monitor” on this machine? (Including any sort of software-based thing that would connect virtual monitors)? Maybe there IS something at a weird display resolution or scaling but it’s hard to notice what.
- Disconnect the monitor manually and reconnect it. Is the issue the same? If not, the monitor itself may be doing weird things when the system tells it to go to standby.
Edit: Ugh didn’t notice the below wasn’t an option at first
There’s a relatively easy workaround to SOME of it: disable the screen turning off after X minutes of inactivity, and replace that with a screensaver that’s a black screen.The screen will always be “on” , even though it won’t be displaying anything, which will prevent your windows from being messed with when your PC times out due to inactivity.But if your PC goes to sleep or you turn a monitor off, it won’t help you.I took out the DP cable from the monitor and that bug didn’t come out. It has to be some correlation of the GPU that goes to sleep
but, with any version of windows released before windows 11 24h2, this problem is not present
If I were you I’d try to change every possible Windows display option I can on every possible monitor and change them back, in each possible combination of monitors plugged in/out.
There’s a possibility there’s an option that seems like it’s set one way but it’s actually not. It happens sometimes with Windows version changes.
There’s an option that says “reduce all windows to icon when a monitor is disconnected” but it seems pure cosmetic, as it has no effect when the monitor is disconnected. Maybe Microsoft will add the logic to that checkbox in windows 12…
For what it’s worth, it works on one of my two PCs. But yeah. Clearly not finished.
what pisses me off is that this bug is not present in windows 10 or windows 11 24H1. If it’s not ready and the 100k software engineers working for microsoft aren’t good enough to fix it before release, delay it for another 6 or even 12 months. Rename it as 25H2 and nobody will complain, the important is that those annoying bugs aren’t there
What sort of monitor do you have?
iiuama prolite 4k monitor with hdmi, dp and dvi. Using DP as it’s the only one that allows 4k 60hz, the revision of hdmi that use it is limited to 4k 30hz
