Dual Monitors in View 4.6

[EJCTownman]

All,

Can Dual monitors be used in View 4.6 when using the RDP protocol or is it just for PCOIP?

Ernie

[mittim12]

You can use dual monitors with RDP but you may need some kind of third party software to make it happen.   With PCOIP it is native between View client and VDI desktop.

[Datto]

With RDP from a desktop/laptop client into a View session via RDP I sometimes create a startup CMD file (run from the laptop/desktop) that specifies a specific width/depth to span RDP across the two monitors (using the mstsc command -- use mstsc /? to see the command line options to use in your CMD file). Then I use a product called SplitView (installed into each RDP session) to make sure when the Maximize command is used on an application window, it only maximizes to one monitor, not maximize across the entire two-monitor setup (Splitview does more than that but it gives you an idea of what challenges you may be facing with a multi-monitor RDP session). Note that some later versions of the RDP client have the /span option as one of the command line options for mstsc.

You can download a trial version of Splitview from the creator's website:

http://www.splitview.com/download

Also, if you're using a thin client and connecting to a Windows 7 VM, use WindowKey+P after connecting to the VM to see the screen span options inside your RDP session (dual montors show same image, dual monitors span the image, only use one monitor for instance). All that assumes you have permission to change the screen span via the logged in user name.

Datto

[grv]

If you are connecting to Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate VMs, you can get native multi-monitor happening over RDP without any 3rd party, and without spanning.  Our users connect from XP SP3, Vista and 7 and they can all do it.  Not sure about Home editions, now that I think about it, but we definately have XP Pro clients and later connecting to our 7 Enterprise VMs via RDP and getting multiple displays with the task bar just on the primary, with proper maximizing to one display or the other, etc.

If your clients are not running Windows 7 (any edition), you may need to update your Remote Desktop Connection client to the latest version in order to get the Multi Display option in the View client to even show up (say, on XP or Vista clients):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969084

This article details the Windows 7 editions, and shows the Enterprise and Ultimate editions as having "Multi-display Terminal Services", which is the feature that makes this work over RDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions