PersistentWindows

The code is forked from http://www.ninjacrab.com/persistent-windows/ with massive enhancements to achieve more reliable user experience.

It seems to be a perfect solution to this unsolved Windows problem since Windows 7 era 2b9d5a18-45cc-4c50-b16e-fd95dbf27ff3?page=1&auth=1

Original description

What is PersistentWindows?
A poorly named utility that persists window positions and size when the monitor display count/resolution adjusts 
and restores back to it’s previous settings.

For those of you with multi-monitors running on a mixture of DisplayPort and any other connection, you can run 
this tool and not have to worry about re-arranging when all is back to normal.

Key features

• Keeps track of window position change in real time, and automatically restores window layout to last matching monitor setup.
• Support remote desktop session with multiple virtual monitor resolutions.
• Can be auto started as a task.
• Support manual save/restore window position to/from persistent database on hard drive, so that closed windows can be restored after reboot.
• Support manual pause/resume auto restore.
• Support capture/restore multiple snapshot of window layout. This feature can be used as an alternative to virtual desktops in Windows 10.
• Support automatic upgrade

Installation

• Download the latest PersistentWindows*.zip file from https://github.com/kangyu-california/PersistentWindows/releases
• Unzip the file into any directory
• It is highly recommended to create a task in Task Scheduler to automatically start PersistentWindows triggered by user log on.

  • Make sure to select "Run only when user is logged on", and disable "Stop the task if it runs longer than (3 days)" in task property settings.

  • Specify command option "-delay_start 10" in Edit Action dialog to avoid startup failure after Windows upgrade

Use instructions

• Run PersistentWindows.exe as normal user, a splash window will pop up, indicating the program has started successfully.
• PersistentWindows minimizes itself as an icon in the systray area on task bar.
• In taskbar settings, turn on PW to let the icon always appear on taskbar, the icon will change to red color during restore, providing visual hint to user to avoid maneuver window
• To save current window layout to persistent storage, right click the icon and select "Capture windows to disk"; To restore saved window layout from persistent storage, or to recover closed windows after reboot, right click the icon and select "Restore windows from disk"
• To pause PersistentWindows, select menu "Pause auto restore"; To resume PersistentWindows, select menu "Resume auto restore", and window layout will be restored to the moment when pause is executed.
• To help restoring taskbar window, make sure taskbar is unlocked (i.e. it can be dragged using mouse), also please do NOT move mouse during window recovery.

Known issues

• A PC reboot triggered by Windows feature/security upgrade has recently caused PW icon to disappear, please add PW command option "-delay_start 10" in task scheduler and reboot again
• Some applications (such as Task Manager, Event Viewer etc) require running PersistentWindows with admin privilege to fully recover window layout. There is an option to "Run with highest priviledges" when you create auto start PersistentWindows task in Task Scheduler.
• PW may stuck at busy status when restoring previous layout if your running Microsoft Visual Studio Code window has a pending update mark. The root cause is unknown, simply proceed to update VScode will let PW resume to normal again.

Tips to digest before reporting a bug

• Window z-order can be restored in addition to two-dementional layout. This feature is is enabled for snapshot restore only.
• To help me diagnose a bug, please run Event Viewer, locate to "Windows Logs" -> "Application" section, then search for Event ID 9990 and 9999, and copy paste the content of these events to new issue report.