Remote Desktop Connection and multiple monitors

My Blog was falling asleep, but now I am asked to continue.

So, I will start with some useful info about Remote Desktop Connection on computers using two monitors. Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection application (mstsc.exe) is a very handy tool to connect and work on servers, development or virtual machines from your desktop computer. In the latest version coming with Vista, but also available for XP, it supports at last desktop machines with two monitors .

If you start MSTSC the gui opens, but the configuration options do not allow to configure for multiple monitors. The screen resolution can be specified just matching to monitor 1 of your desktop. The connected remote desktop will be shown and in window mode the window can be moved anywhere on monitor 1 and 2. The window cannot be resized to use both monitors jointly. In fullscreen mode it will be shown just on monitor 1. To use the new multiscreen support you have to specify the parameter /span on the command line when starting the application! Then you can use both monitors, but just in fullscreen mode (you cannot specify another resolution).

Unfortunately to span across monitors, the monitors must all have the same height. I favor to use my two 19" monitors one vertically with 1024 x 1280 for texts and one horinzontally with 1280 x 1024 for presentations. Using the /span parameter of MSTSC shows a screen of 2304 x 1280 using both monitors; resolution cannot be changed. So, some part of the remote desktop is not accessible or just by scrolling. This is very awful. The /span feature is inapplicable for a configuration where monitors do not have the same height. But there is an easy to use solution. Instead of specifying the /span parameter on the command line, you can send parameters for width and height. By this you can define large resolutions and the remote desktop will appear with this resolution. You just have to do one thing: After connecting the remote desktop, you must change from fullscreen to window mode and resize the window to its full size. The window will have a title bar, but this is no problem, since you can specify any resultion (even resultions normally not supported like 2000 x 500). For my configuration I use the parameters /w:2300 /h:990 and this uses my two monitors at the best.