Solved How Can I Have Windows 8 Boot Up On a Single Monitor?

[tylerjmcc09]

I was having some problems with my dual monitor setup and while messing around with the settings I am afraid I messed it up a lot worse than my previous problems were. To keep it short, one of my monitors was not popping up (it ended up being the cable), but when I was in the settings I clicked the monitor to pick a "unknown device" as it was never detected. Now, when my computer boots up the main screen is the "unknown device" and the secondary screen is one of my two monitors. Because of this my screen only launches up as a blank gray screen. Typically one of my screens show this, while the primary one gives me the option to put in my password to login. Because this monitor which is my main monitor does not exist, I cannot get to my login screen. I know I am still on dual monitors because it will let me run the cursor off the screen as it does when I am using my monitors.

Basically, I want to boot up not on extended and only on my monitor (I tried the Win+P but it doesn't work on the gray screen). I also tried booting up in safe mode, but was unable to access it with Shift F8. If anyone has a simple solution to this before I have to do a reinstall of Windows 8, it would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

 

[tylerjmcc09]

I ended up figuring this out somehow. I hit the windows key, and started mashing all my buttons in frustration (great technique to solving problems), and I seemed to hit some sort of zoom in feature. It zoomed in the login box on my "fake screen" enough to where it overlapped onto my other screen. This allowed me to type in the password, and allowed me to get onto the desktop on one of my monitors. From there I went into Screen Resolution in the control panel and sorted out my issue. Thanks for all who took a look, and hopefully I'll help someone else out in the future - although I feel like this won't be too common of a problem for others.