Single Monitor act exactly like dual monitor?

Question

Does anyone know if there is a way to make a single monitor act like a dual monitor with 2 totally seperated areas that are detected at the window's level.

Eg. 2560x1600 monitor to show up as 2 panels with 1280x1600 resolution each or a 1920x1200 showing up as 2 960x1200 monitors. I am usually looking at code/documents mostly so larger vertical vs horizontal resoutions are preferred.

Is there any video card drivers that support this or is there some layer to put over windows to allow for this functionality. The solution should make windows see 2 monitors when looking at the display settings. There should be no difference from a real 2 monitor solution.

Is this even possible?

Edit: Using windows Vista.

Edit 2: I am looking for something that virtualizes the multiple monitors so windows itself thinks there is 2 monitors. Not looking for something that will give me split bars etc.

Solution 1

Try WinSplit Revolution.

Edit: Since you want Windows to think there are two physical monitors, maybe Matrox PowerDesk or Virtual Display Manager would fit your needs.

Solution 2

How about we just solve your original problem?

Are you using windows 7? You can drag the window title bar to the left or right edge to use up half the screen.

For XP/Vista try this http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/188/xp_vista_tile_cascade_minimize_windows/

Solution 3

Download the virtual display driver from https://www.amyuni.com/downloads/usbmmidd.zip

Unpack the zip file to an empty folder, e.g. c:\temp\usbmmidd

Open a command prompt window as Administrator (you cannot add a device to your system unless you "Run As Administrator")

Run the following commands:

cd c:\temp\usbmmid (or whatever destination folder you chose)

deviceinstaller64 install usbmmidd.inf usbmmidd

Make sure you see the message that the drivers are signed by Amyuni Technologies Inc. This is a confirmation that the drivers went through Microsoft driver signing procedure and are virus free

deviceinstaller64 enableidd 1

If you are on a 32-bit system, replace "deviceinstaller64" by "deviceinstaller"

Works beautifully, from https://www.amyuni.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3030

Comments

[Pyrolistical]

and btw you could be wasting money codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001198.html

[Dan Walker]

@Pyro: That doesn't seem very relevant. He's not hiring programmers to create something, he wants some pre-built consumer software. It's a completely different scenario from what Jeff was talking about.

[Mr. Shiny and New 安宇]

What are you trying to solve? It sounds like you are trying to fool Windows. There might be a better way.

[Ivan Dossev]

Thanks for the great question! I was just wondering if this was possible, as it would be a much nicer to use one ultra high res monitor rather than being stuck with several physical monitors... and it's borderless :)

[Kelsey]

The built in cascading features are not what I am looking for as you need to constantly be selecting and arranging windows. With a dual monitor solution even placement is remembered and you just need to maximize to a screen.

[Mr. Shiny and New 安宇]

+1 for solving the real problem instead of introducing a hack.

[me_and]

Virtual Display Manager looks like it solves the problem. Matrox PowerDesk looks like it needs Matrox hardware, and WinSplit Revolution just does window rearranging, not actually emulating dual screens.

[Kent]

With Windows 7 (maybe Vista too?) you can use [windows-key]+[left] or [windows-key]+[right] to align currently active window on the left or right half of the screen.

[Ivan Dossev]

I am giving VDM a try. It creates "areas" on the screen. There are some annoying glitches (under Win7) that hopefully will be resolved.

[Ivan Dossev]

VDM creates "areas" on the screen. Don't expect to see the "Virtual Devices" in the Control Panel's Display settings. Windows does not recognize the layouts when you drag a window to the edges of the screen.