Choosing a Primary Monitor on Dell Latitude D620

Every once in a while, I undock my Dell Latitude D620 and when I come back to the docking station the monitor configuration I have goes haywire.

I can’t ever remember how to go back in and force my external monitor to be the Primary Monitor while my Laptop monitor gets forced to ride in the sidecar. The normal right-click on the desktop and choose properties doesn’t seem to work with the monitor control panel built into Windows.

Thanks to a mutha-long Google search query, which revealed this blog post by Rick Strahl and this forum post on SpiceWorks, I thought I should check if I have the nVidia control panel or other additional monitor control tools.

I don’t have nVidia, but I did find a “Graphics Properties” option when right-clicking on open space on the desktop which brought me the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for mobile control panel.

In the Display Devices area, I can choose which monitor is “Primary” and which is secondary, putting all my taskbars and shortcuts and everything right where I want it to be, on my gloriously-large widescreen monitor, not my teeny-tiny laptop screen.

I post this because maybe it can help someone else (or myself, next time I dash off to a meeting and undock my computer!)