Changing where RDP Windows Open On The Screen

Have you ever created a saved RDP session and found that it wants to open on the wrong screen or in a half-scrolling window?  It’s annoying, right?

After a random opening one in NotePad2, I realized the RDP files were simply text files of properties.  Easy enough; however, the values are absolutely painful to read through.

Here’s a snippet of the windowing properties:

screen mode id:i:1
desktopwidth:i:1024
desktopheight:i:768
session bpp:i:16
winposstr:s:0,1,400,92,2500,992

I’m assuming that the properties are in order of

name:type:value

“screen mode id” takes an “i” or integer and has a value of 1 (for windowed mode).
“winposstr” takes an “s” or string and has a value of 0,1,400,92,2500,992

“winposstr” sounds a lot like Window Position String, right?

After a bit of Googling, I found KB886187 which discusses each of the attributes; however, forwards you on to another article on MSDN regarding the WINDOWPOS (for winposstr).

Roughly, winposstr follows the following order:

0,[maximized = 0, windows = 1], [left], [top], [window width aka right], [window height aka bottom]

So, I prefer an 1152×864 window (as it fits nicely on my side 1280×1024 monitor), I’d set the desktopwidth and desktopheight to:

desktopwidth:i:1152
desktopheight:i:864

Now, my “main screen” is 1920×1200, so to get things on the right-side screen (which is 1280×1024), I need to move on the left PAST 1920.

winposstr:s:0,1,1970,10,3138,910

• 1970 is 50 (px) from the left side of my second monitor (1920 + 50)
• 50 (px) from the top of the screen
• 3138 (px) is 1970 (starting position) + 1152 (width of the window) + 16 for the window padding (thanks Randy!)
• 960 (px) is 50 (starting position) + 864 (height of the window) + 46 for horizontal padding and the title bar

Now my RDP window always opens on my second monitor—just about in the center and looks good.

Tags: RDP, Remote+Desktop, Windows+Server