One of the programs that we use is Microsoft’s “Terminal Server” client — mstsc.  On of the problems that we experience is:  a user will want the RDP session to open on a specific monitor.  Sometimes the rdp client will let the work, others, it won’t.

Start the Remote Desktop connection (mstsc).

Click on the Options button, and save your session information.  (Just remember where you saved the file.  You will need this in the next step).

Open Notepad.

Now, open the file that you had saved.  test.rdp

Believe it or not, you will actually open a text document.

We need to take a look at the line called:  winposstrs.  This is the coordinates of your screen that you want the RDP session to occupy.

In the picture below, we see two monitors:

The tricky part is to calculate the starting and ending positions.  As we see in the example above, the right hand monitor is our primary, and the left our secondary.

We also need to know what the resolution of the monitors are as well.  In this example, we will use that both monitors are capable of supporting 1280 x 1024 resolution.   The user wants the screen to be positioned on the secondary monitor (left eye dominance).

Now, lets look at the winposstr string:

winposstr:s:0,1,236,112,1036,712

Lets start looking at the 3rd number.  In this case it’s 236.  This is the starting position of the window.  With the number 236, it would be on the right hand monitor.  If I wanted it to be at the top of the left hand monitor, this number would need to be -1279.  (Subtract the horizontal resolution from 0).

The 4th number is the offset from the top of the screen.  If I wanted it to be at the top, this value would be 0.

The 5th number is the horizontal width (pixel location) for the screen.  I could start at -1024 and add the width of the screen, so it could be 0.  (There are 16 pixels that are needed for the window padding — the border for the RDP client).

The 6th number is the height of the window.  Again, there are 46 pixels needed for padding and the height of the title bar.

Now that we have these settings in place, save the rdp file.

The next time you click on the file, it will start the RDP client where you want it to go.

/jd