Remote Desktop Connection not going full screen

Question

I'm using a Dell Latitude laptop with two external displays. When I make a connection in Remote Desktop (Windows 7) and maximize the window it only resizes to the max resolution of my built-in display (1360 x 768), not the external monitors (1680 x 1050). I've seen a lot of answers which say to use Ctrl + Alt + Break, but that doesn't work for me -- it's the same size screen with a big black border around it. Is there any way to fix this? Like if I manually edit an .rdp file?

Solution

The below procedure worked for me on Windows 7:

1. Open "run" prompt
2. type mstsc.exe
3. click on "Options" option in the bottom-left corner of the "Remote Desktop Connection" popup
4. click on "Display" tab
5. Change "Display Configuration" to "Full Screen" by dragging the slider to extreme right.

Comments

[Matt]

An rdp session will by default take of the size of the main screen the session was started on. That session will not change size simply moving it to a different resolution of monitor. This bugged me a couple years ago and i have been using RD Tabs since. With that tool i can move a session to a new screen and disconnect/ reconnect for it to assume the resolution of the current screen.

[cdavid]

RDP 8.1 supports dynamic resolution update (if you connect, disconnect monitors, move full screen windows around): blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2013/12/16/… .