Quicken tries to open on a “disconnected” 2nd monitor - can’t run. (edit)

Question

I have one monitor besides my laptop screen. If I last opened Quicken on the extra monitor, disconnect the monitor, and open Quicken when the extra monitor is not available then Quicken opens on the monitor that is no longer connected and cannot be used. I have to go home, connect the monitor, and open Quicken, move Quicken to the laptop screen, shut everything down, and go back to where I wanted to use Quicken without the monitor.

Is this a WIndows 10 Pro bug or a Quicken bug? If a Windows bug can Quicken work around it by a way to open on the current screen, i.e. the laptop screen, instead of where it was opened last time?

Chris_QPW · Answer

BTW another bug in Quicken is that if you close Quicken with it maximized it will store the maximized size and not the "restore down/Normal" size.  This doesn't give the expected behavior.  Take any other application.  Size it, then maximize it, and then close it.  Then open it again, it will be in maximized mode, now click the restore down button, and it will be back to what you sized it as.  Try the same thing with Quicken and when you get to point where you click the restore down button you will see that the size/position doesn't change, because it is saving the max size not the "normal" size.

Ps56k2 · Answer

interesting - here is my laptop 1280 x 800 - with Quicken in a centered mid sized desktop window

[Window]

State=Normal

Width=1090 … 1280 screen max

Height=631   … 800 screen max

Left=58

Top=18

and my full screen -

[Window]

State=Maximized

Width=1279 … notice the single missing pixel 1280

Height=759 … notice the single missing pixel PLUS the taskbqr area at the bottom

Left=1

Top=1

Chris_QPW · Answer

Quicken always likes to be run on the 1st monitor.

Not exactly correct.  What Quicken does is store the position and size of main window.  This is an "absolute" location.

For instance this is mine (which is in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Quicken\config\QUSER.ini)

[Window]

State=Normal

Height=1200

Width=1920

Top=1

Left=-1919

Notice the -1919, that is because I run Quicken on my second display which is to the left of the primary display (right is positive, and left is negative.  Up from the primary display would be negative).

BTW you can see that Quicken offsets its location from 0,0 by one pixel in either direction.  That is because it in fact starts as a one pixel hidden program that then shows the "fake main window" with a one by one pixel offset.

Anyways, there isn't anything in the Windows libraries that prevent an application from setting this location completely off screen.  When starting Quicken just uses this stored location to set the position/size of the main window at startup.  To do this right, a program has to take the information of all the locations of the displays and determine if the saved location is off screen and if so, change back to using a location on the primary display.  Quicken doesn't do this.