Today after leaving my pc for about 15 minutes while I did other things, when I 'woke it up' from the display being
dark all of my desktop icons had been moved, now scattered all over the screen and the taskbar had been moved from the
bottom to the right hand side of the screen. Can anyone advise me as to the cause of this ? I have of course done an
inernet search but all that I found on there only referred to icons being moved, not the taskbar. I can, I assume,
rearrange manually, but what if it keeps happening ? I have never experienced this problem before but there is a first
time for everything.
Can anyone please advise ?
TIA

--
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I have just reset the taskbar position to the bottom of my display and the icons have all moved back into the positions
at which they were previously. Has anyone any ideas what is happening ?

On Sat, 01 Jul 2023 09:31:56 +0100, scbs29 <scbs29@fred.talktalk.net> wrote:

>Today after leaving my pc for about 15 minutes while I did other things, when I 'woke it up' from the display being
>dark all of my desktop icons had been moved, now scattered all over the screen and the taskbar had been moved from the
>bottom to the right hand side of the screen. Can anyone advise me as to the cause of this ? I have of course done an
>inernet search but all that I found on there only referred to icons being moved, not the taskbar. I can, I assume,
>rearrange manually, but what if it keeps happening ? I have never experienced this problem before but there is a first
>time for everything.
>Can anyone please advise ?
>TIA

--
remove fred before emailing

On 7/1/2023 4:36 AM, scbs29 wrote:
> I have just reset the taskbar position to the bottom of my display and the icons have all moved back into the positions
> at which they were previously. Has anyone any ideas what is happening ?
>
> On Sat, 01 Jul 2023 09:31:56 +0100, scbs29 <scbs29@fred.talktalk.net> wrote:
>
>> Today after leaving my pc for about 15 minutes while I did other things, when I 'woke it up' from the display being
>> dark all of my desktop icons had been moved, now scattered all over the screen and the taskbar had been moved from the
>> bottom to the right hand side of the screen. Can anyone advise me as to the cause of this ? I have of course done an
>> inernet search but all that I found on there only referred to icons being moved, not the taskbar. I can, I assume,
>> rearrange manually, but what if it keeps happening ? I have never experienced this problem before but there is a first
>> time for everything.
>> Can anyone please advise ?
>> TIA
>

Does your monitor support physical rotation ?

Some monitors have a rectangular device, with a circular
track inside and a ball bearing. If you rotate the monitor in its
stand, the device rotates on its circuit board, and a different set
of "compass point" electrical contacts are closed by the (conductive)
ball bearing.

A signal on the cable (likely EDID based), tells the computer the
display is rotated.

The display dimensions, when rotated 90 degrees, have a different aspect
ratio to the OS, so the icons need to be re-arranged and so on. The display
started as 1920x1080 and ended up 1080x1920.

Summary: Check that the ball bearing sensor is not failing.
It's either that, or the circuit connected to it, is
not working right.

A second possibility, is if the computer cannot "read" the EDID,
it could declare the monitor 'EDID-free" and then for safety, the
display is set to 1024x768, which will also cause the icons to move
all over the place. But, that theory is shot down, by the task bar
moving to the right. That could only happen if the rotation theory
was at play (monitor rotated 90 degrees to the left).

Paul

scbs29 wrote:
> I have just reset the taskbar position to the bottom of my display and the icons have all moved back into the positions
> at which they were previously. Has anyone any ideas what is happening ?

It's very easy to move the taskbar inadvertently. What happens is that
you click and drag without knowing you have done so. This is
particularly true where the click and drag is the action which "wakes"
the computer, because the screen takes a short time to light up and the
image you then see has the taskbar moved to the new position.

But when I move the taskber all the other icons remain in their original
positions.

I may have disabled some sort of "auto-rearrange" function but I can't
tell you what. This is for Windows 7 Pro - other OSs may behave
differently.

There is a "lock the taskbar" setting which will prevent you from moving
the taskbar inadvertently.

--
Graham J

Thanks for the replies

Paul: My monitor does not support physical rotation.

Graham J: I had the taskbar locked already but it had still moved.

Possibly a glitch that hasn't shown itself before?

On Sat, 01 Jul 2023 09:36:12 +0100, scbs29 <scbs29@fred.talktalk.net> wrote:

>I have just reset the taskbar position to the bottom of my display and the icons have all moved back into the positions
>at which they were previously. Has anyone any ideas what is happening ?
>
>On Sat, 01 Jul 2023 09:31:56 +0100, scbs29 <scbs29@fred.talktalk.net> wrote:
>
>>Today after leaving my pc for about 15 minutes while I did other things, when I 'woke it up' from the display being
>>dark all of my desktop icons had been moved, now scattered all over the screen and the taskbar had been moved from the
>>bottom to the right hand side of the screen. Can anyone advise me as to the cause of this ? I have of course done an
>>inernet search but all that I found on there only referred to icons being moved, not the taskbar. I can, I assume,
>>rearrange manually, but what if it keeps happening ? I have never experienced this problem before but there is a first
>>time for everything.
>>Can anyone please advise ?
>>TIA

--
remove fred before emailing

scbs29 wrote:
>
> Thanks for the replies
>
> Paul: My monitor does not support physical rotation.
>
> Graham J: I had the taskbar locked already but it had still moved.
>
> Possibly a glitch that hasn't shown itself before?
>
>

It sounds like some inadvertent mouse movement over desktop settings.
You'll find all kinds of interesting choices. You can experiment with
them, easily changing back after viewing. Perhaps your particular change
will show up with this;

Right click desktop, View, all kinds of options, especially Graphic
Options/ Rotation

Ed

scbs29 <scbs29@fred.talktalk.net> wrote:

> Today after leaving my pc for about 15 minutes while I did other
> things, when I 'woke it up' from the display being dark all of my
> desktop icons had been moved, now scattered all over the screen and
> the taskbar had been moved from the bottom to the right hand side of
> the screen. Can anyone advise me as to the cause of this ? I have of
> course done an inernet search but all that I found on there only
> referred to icons being moved, not the taskbar. I can, I assume,
> rearrange manually, but what if it keeps happening ? I have never
> experienced this problem before but there is a first time for
> everything.

I've seen desktop icons get rearranged when screen resolution changes.
The OS is trying to keep all the desktop icons in view. At a lower
resolution, some icons would disappear off the screen to be out of view.
Right-click on the desktop and check the context menu to see if View ->
Auto arrange icons is enabled or not. I have it disabled.

It's possible a program you run (even when the monitor is powered down)
changes the screen resolution. For example, I have video games that run
in a lower resolution than the default one for my desktop. That's okay,
because the game runs fullscreen. The problem is when the game crashes
then the desktop resolution will be lower, and the desktop icons get
moved to keep them visible. I've also had games that didn't restore the
desktop resolution upon exit from the game. I ended up getting
DesktopOK to record the icon positions, so if the screen resolution got
farked, I changed it back to what I want, I can use DesktopOK to restore
the icon positions.

However, a change in screen resolution would not explain the Windows
taskbar movement. When not customizing the taskbar, do you always leave
the taskbar locked? When unlocked, the taskbar can be moved even when
the monitor is powered down (many monitors have their own power saving
feature than relying on power options in Windows). To repower the
monitor, do you move the mouse, or use the keyboard, like tapping the
spacebar? How do you wake the monitor?

Are you using any GUI customization software to make Windows 10 look
more like Windows 10, like running Classic Shell (which got abandoned,
and superseded by Open Shell), Start10, Start Menu X, or similar tool?