Coherence behaviour on multiple displays

I have multiple displays using my macbook LCD and an 17" external monitor.

At first I wasn't able to move my windows from one screen to another.

I was happy to see a checkbox under the "Customize View" dialog box called "Use multiple displays"

(1st issue)

After checking this box, it didn't work - I still cannot move a window from one display to another. My workaround is to start coherence while my single window is in my external display but this is not what I want - I want my task bar to be on my macbook and to be able to move windows into my external display.

(2nd issue)

I tried to check "Relocate automatically" and I am unclear what this means now that I've tried it - the task bar got "stuck" on the left hand side of my screen and now I have it stuck on the top of the screen by toggling this option. I just want to get it back to the bottom. How do I do this?

thanks for any support you can provide - I have other pre-sales questions outstanding by email I am still waiting for a response.

I am pleased at your My Boot Camp functionality!

 

Hello Chinarut,

You should not have changed anything on Windows side. To designate which single monitor Coherence would use, just open Mac System Preferences -> Displays -> Arrange tab and move the Parallels Desktop menu bar from the monitor where it is to the monitor you would like it to be.

Best regards,
Xenos

 

I get the impression you may have read my post a bit too fast. Let me clarify:

1. How do I get Coherence to use my 2 displays? I cannot move windows between both displays right now and your "Use multiple displays" option doesn't work.

2. How do I move my task bar when it gets stuck on the left hand side of the screen? I want it back on the bottom per your default.

I appreciate your quick response!

 

Hello Chinarut,

You can make Coherence to use 2 displays the same way you make any other application using 2 displays.

I hope this article will help you to configure your Mac to work with two monitors.

To move the Mac dock to the bottom of desktop, open Mac -> Dock -> Position on Bottom.

If you mean something different, please attach screenshots for I could better understand the problem.

Best regards,
Xenos

 

We have another miscommunication. Let's try again.

I have multiple monitors working already. I am able to move Mac OS X windows back and forth no problem.

What doesn't work is moving my WinXP windows between both screens.

This feature is not working while I am in Coherence mode.

Does this make my situation any clearer?

 

I might not be able to offer great insight here, but wanted to start by saying:

Xenos.. get some coffee and stop treating this poster like an idiot and RTFQ! Honestly on some threads you offer frustration back rather than help. They've asked 3 times and you've chided them "You should not have changed anything on Windows side." which they didn't say they did and then offered them a dummies.com weblink? Damn.. it's lucky you don't work for a company that uses customer evals as a source for how secure your job is!

chinarut:
If you put the VM into single window mode are you able to move the taskbar?

If you right click the task bar does it have the 'lock taskbar' checked? If so, and you uncheck it, does it move now?

If the above don't work and Xenos cant help you; could you live with this setup: Use the parallels OSX dock icon as the start button, and use parallels to hide the windows taskbar completely? This is my set-up and as the windows apps are shown in my OSX dock and I can apple-tab to switch to them, I find i don't need the taskbar. When bubbles appear from the task bar (i.e. updates ready to install, etc.) the bubble still shows up and is clickable. Additionally it's a setting you can toggle by using the the "applications" menu in parallels on the OSX menu bar.

In windows do you have multiple monitors detected? Going full screen does it put you in one monitor or two?


Sily questions are:
Are you using build 5584 of parallels?
Do you have enough video RAM allocated to the VM?

And when all else fails I find rebooting my VM seems to solve weird quirks.

Not really solutions for you, but you've asked the same thing 3 times with no real response and I wanted to at least give you a couple of things to try.

 

thanks Edd! I was being as patient as I could be and Xenos, I appreciate your fast response time even though it apparently did seem to cause a little loss of fidelity

I never thought to check to see if my WinXP install sees 2 monitors - i just checked - it does not! (Control Panel->Display->Settings correct?)

I tried to check "Use multiple displays" again and it puts the taskbar on the bottom where my laptop is.

ha - interestingly enough - I just now was able to drag this web browser window from my external to my laptop screen and now it doesn't let me drag it back up to my external! go figure.

I am using build 5584 and for the record, I don't have the stuck taskbar issue now that I reinstalled WinXP since my first post.

Edd, I do like the sound of your setup so I will play around with it a bit more when I have the cycles. Thank you very much for chiming in - community-driven support clearly shines through in this instance!

 

ok - I'm addicted - created cycles now

I found an interesting side effect in your suggested setup. In Coherence, I hid the task bar and when I go to minimize an application in my external monitor - it minimizes to my taskbar, not my dock.

If I check "use multiple displays" again - the windows gets shoved off my external and onto my laptop (along with the task bar) and when I minimize it, it goes into the dock.

are you using this setup with 2 screens too by chance?

 

to be clear - my only workaround seems to be:
1. Put Parallels in Single Window mode
2. move the Single Window to my external
3. Start Coherence

I leave the task bar up on my external as I now notice minimizing my windows does not *reliably* put windows into the dock. on occasion (1 window, same application), the window gets minimized to the task bar.

I can live without dragging windows between screens but this does go down as a tick mark against Parallels in my eval.

 

I bet multi-screen improvements will be on the way.

I'm not using two screens, but had to chime in as I mentioned above.

One other place to look for solace is in the VM configuration. So the next time you shut windows down, click the configuration text in the VM window and select coherence.

See if checking or unchecking the "Group all Coherence windows" and "do not minimize to dock."

As a personal recommendation I would definitely uncheck "bring notification windows to front" that'll prevent parallels from stealing focus (at least after a number of weeks changing the setting today has fixed that issue so far).

It seems like you've got everything setup correctly, but without another monitor I can only empathize from the sidelines.

If you're running Leopard, you could also try seeing if spaces helps you out moving between screens and keeping things humming.

Good luck.

 

i was able to get coherence working across both monitors

let me tell you what i had to do:

1. i set the video memory to 64mb

in the "Coherence Options:"
2. uncheck "Exclude Dock" on Working Area
3. checked "Use multiple displays" on Working Area
4. uncheck "Relocate automatically" on Windows Taskbar

now when i start coherence i am able to move windows across monitors. windows still only sees 1 monitor, which is what i would expect since parallels probably just tells windows you have 1 big monitor which is confirmed by showing the windows taskbar and it stretches across both monitors and display settings shows 1 monitor with 2688x818 pixels. (note i set the resolution to be the same on both machines to see this, otherwise the taskbar is at the bottom of the highest resolution monitor and not visible on the other.)

i would suggest if you use multiple monitors to pretty much give up on using the windows taskbar.


--
tony

 

I am now using the same settings as recommended above - just two problems left:
Taskbar is really not usable since it stretches over both displays
If you maximize a window in parallels it also stretches over both monitors - I expect it to maximize on the current display
Will there be a fix for this?

TIA

 

Ditto on both problems - I hope they come up with a fix for these, as this is pretty annoying, especially if you have an external with a different resolution...