Hello DisplayFusion people! I just recently started the free trial of program, and overall, I'm pretty impressed with its capabilities. However, there are some bugs with profile switching as per my title, which I will describe here.

I figured out how to use monitor profiles to keep my wallpapers arranged how I want them, and my desktop icons where I want them, etc. when switching which screen is primary. I have an HDTV that I use for games and videos, but since there is sadly no way to force a game to fullscreen on a secondary monitor in Win7, I have to switch it to "primary", then switch back to my smaller desktop monitor being primary when I'm done. DF's profiles allow me to do this while keeping everything arranged and on the proper monitor, but I am running into several apparent glitches:

1) This is constant: whenever I switch to my "Game" profile (TV as primary), this happens, without exception. An unknown black bar with a little arrow in it just... appears, and hangs out on my desktop (on the smaller monitor). Here is an image:
http://i.imgur.com/UqnYutC.jpg

You can see it there, slightly off the center of the screen to the left. Just a vertical black bar with a gray arrow in it (which turns blue when I hover over it). I have no idea what it is, I don't recall seeing anything like this as part of DF or any other program, but it shows up every time I switch to my Game profile (but ONLY when I switch to that profile).

2) When switching back to my "Main" profile (smaller monitor as primary), currently open programs sometimes go a bit haywire with positioning. The minimizing animation (where the windows actually visually "zoom" back down into the taskbar) won't go to the taskbar, but instead goes flying off the left side of my monitor, offscreen (and not to the TV; that extends the desktop to the right). And sometimes, the window will MAXIMIZE by flying off the left side of the screen, which is obviously a bigger problem as it becomes inaccessible. This behavior occurs about 50% of the time when switching back to my main profile.

3) This is the least serious issue, but still an annoyance. I designated hot keys for each of the two profiles I set up (one with the smaller monitor as primary, and one with the TV as primary). Sometimes, when hitting the hotkey, it sort of begins to switch to the other profile, but the "do you want to keep this config" dialog never appears, and within seconds, it snaps back to the previous profile. This seemed to be happening about 30% of the time when I tried to switch profiles.

I would probably pay for the full version once my trial is up just on the strength of the Monitor Profiles feature alone, because of how capably it provides a work-around to the dilemma of needing to designate the TV as primary for gaming while not wanting my wallpapers and icons and programs to be constantly shuffled around, but only if the first two issues could be solved. The third one can be quite annoying, but the first two are real deal-breakers for me.

Any help is appreciated!

So! Sorry to double post before anyone else has even replied, but there is some good news: that black bar that would just show up and hang out in the middle of my desktop? Turns out it WAS part of a program. AI Suite II, which is an ASUS monitoring app provided with my motherboard, was creating it. I imagine that there's something about the way DF changes the display configurations that it didn't like, so a little piece of the interface got stuck there when the monitor profile would change. Stopping the app removed the bar, and restarting it doesn't bring it back, so that's good. Still kind of annoying, but at least I know it's not just being caused by DF completely glitching out, and I know how to easily get rid of it if it comes back.

Thus, the second issue in my original post now takes priority. Dunno what is causing the windows to minimize off the left side of my screen, rather than to the taskbar. It's kind of jarring visually, the way they fly down off the screen instead of going where they are supposed to, but of greater concern is that they sometimes maximize off-screen, rendering the window inaccessible. So, still hoping to troubleshoot that one.

EDIT: And I have to add something else: the third problem in my original post (hitting the hotkey for a monitor profile switch causes it to switch to that profile only for a moment, failing to show me the "do you want to keep this configuration" dialog, before snapping back to the previous profile) has just made itself much more pressing. =/ Just a moment ago, I was changing from one profile to another, and that issue popped up about ten times in a row. I kept hitting the hotkey combo, and it would start to change, and I think I even saw the dialog coming up a couple times, but within a second or two, it would just revert back to the profile it had been on before I hit the hotkey. Pretty frustrating.

Correct. Both profiles have mostly the same options across the board, since the whole idea was to make it so that I could switch the primary back and forth, while having programs, functions, desktop icons, etc. move as little as possible. Essentially the only difference between the two profiles IS the primary monitor change.



You can do that?! Wow, I completely missed that, whoops. I'll go in and look for that in the settings tonight (at work at the moment). If the prompt could just be turned off, that might just solve it, since if I understand you, that would mean that pressing the hotkey just makes the profile change happen immediately, without waiting for any further user input.

As for the timing out: possibly, though it all occurs very quickly. I don't think I really made this clear in my previous posts, actually. It goes like this:

Hit hotkey > screens go black > new profile starts to load > (SOMETIMES I can see the prompt dialog box appearing at this point, but I never have enough time to click anything in it before the next step begins) > screen goes black again, previous profile snaps back into place. That whole sequence takes maybe two or three seconds total, at most.

There was one other thing. Last night, during a profile change, my desktop icons jumped over to the TV, despite the fact that both profiles (the one I was switching from, and the one I was switching to) specify keeping the icons on the smaller monitor. Now, it's only happened once, so I'm hoping it was just a fluke. I'll post about it in here if it happens again tonight/tomorrow/etc.

Thanks for responding!

I've uploaded a text file copied from the Troubleshooting tab with this post. Thanks!

Thanks for looking into this, Keith... really, it's all not as big of an issue as it appeared to be at first, since some of the issues I was having went away. And as for the stuff minimizing/maximizing off screen, it's an annoyance, but it CAN be fixed (using the "bring all windows to this monitor" hotkey, or by dragging off-screen maximized windows back onto the screen with the "Move" command and then arrow keys). I appreciate you trying to track it down, but I've more or less decided to buy the program for the functionality, even with this minor issue...

...which is why I'm actually disappointed I missed the sale! By about one day, too. I saw the email, but have been a bit too preoccupied to act on it. The computer I've been working with is a recent build, completed in late January. The graphics card, as it turns out, is defective: I've been dealing with driver crashes all over the place (and it was a REPLACEMENT for the first graphics card I got, which had bad fans! I'm having all the luck). So that's kind of taken priority; I just didn't notice the time frame on the sale.

So you probably can't answer this definitively, but is there any chance you might know when another sale like that would happen? Are they regular occurrences or only every now and then? If it were likely that one might happen again within a few months, I might try to hold out...

Hi,
I just found this thread and I can confirm that this issue:
"3) This is the least serious issue, but still an annoyance. I designated hot keys for each of the two profiles I set up (one with the smaller monitor as primary, and one with the TV as primary). Sometimes, when hitting the hotkey, it sort of begins to switch to the other profile, but the "do you want to keep this config" dialog never appears, and within seconds, it snaps back to the previous profile. This seemed to be happening about 30% of the time when I tried to switch profiles."

happens to me on 5.0.1 on windows 7. Exactly as described, its almost as if it thinks about switching, goes off the first profile then hits the second profile and reverts automatically. This is on the full version.

Thanks for looking into this!