I'm having this odd problem when I use Visual Studio 2008 in a multi-monitor situation. Should anyone have any stories on how they could fix this issue or prevent it from happening, I’m all ears.

I’ve got two monitors. One of them is my laptop screen, another is a monitor connected via HDMI. The same monitor was previously connected via VGA, and the results are exactly the same; this problem occurs no matter how I’m connected to the monitor. I saw the problem with Vista, and now I’ve upgraded to Win7 and I’m seeing the exact same behavior. I’ve dealt with this problem for over a year now and have yet to see any solid resolution; I’d hoped the problem was a Vista issue that would be fixed by Win7, but no such luck.

My laptop monitor is #1, my desktop widescreen is #2. The desktop widescreen is to the left of my laptop.

I open the IDE, and move the Output Window (hiding turned off, obviously, I want it to stay on the screen) to the Monitor #2. I leave the other IDE windows open normally in Monitor #1. The screenshot below should illustrate this pretty clearly. The squiggly red line (click the image for a larger version if needed) indicates where my monitors split. Now, each time I either hit F5 to debug an application – any application type, MVC, Silverlight, ugly code, pretty code, many/few projects, it doesn’t matter – The IDE will crash. Note, this doesn’t happen 100% of the time. Sometimes the IDE will let me start the debugging process, but when I hit stop, I’ll surely see the error. I won’t see it if I build, I will see it if I try to attach to a process like a running instance of the Web Development Server.

Either way, if I attempt to debug (which is, ironically, why I’m using the Output Window in a lot of cases, to see debugging information), the IDE crashes and I see the window below.

I’d love to hear any solutions on this, any recommendations on how you’ve solved this in your own setup, or if you’re completely aghast that what I’m experiencing because You’ve got no problems running the IDE in Multi-Monitor mode. That’s a safe assessment, this seems to be isolated with me, but I can’t imagine how isolated it really is when I’ve seen it happen in 2 monitor setups and with 2 different operating systems. If you have the time, replicate this situation and let me know if you’re seeing the same behavior. And thanks a lot, if you have the motivation to do so, I sincerely appreciate any help I can get in this matter!

Please don’t refer me to Microsoft Support on this, either, as I’m sure they’ll be of little help, and may claim it a display driver issue, user error, or both. Point is, we all know we can get more traction from our peers that we can from the machine anyway, so that’s why I’ll delete any comments advising I touch base with MS Support or submit a ticket. This blog post is my ticket-submission.