Totally losing it...

LOTRO will NOT work with multiple monitors, after some bloody patch somewhere.
Simple.. Two accounts, main screen gets focus, other account on alternate screen in a little box, at least, that is how it used to work.

Now, I cannot at all get two accounts to run, ever. Or, if I do, they are both on the second screen, and won't swap to main.

After a reboot, I can't get both accounts to launch. First starts up fine, second dies, then I use ISBoxer config, and it screws up all windows/regions.

Win7 Pro, everything worked fine till a couple months ago, now it is completely broken. Sad I renewed

[lax]

1. If you updated your video drivers or changed your monitors around, the monitors saved in your Window Layout may no longer be accurate. Try making a new Window Layout

2. Which DirectX version is the game set to use in the video/graphics options? Did you try changing it?

I have made new layouts, I even deleted everything, and started with the wizard, no help.

DirectX 11, on win 7 pro.

More details:
Two monitors, the main one is the active character screen, windowed, 1920x1200, no border. The second one (that used to be my swap slot) is in a reduced display in the lower corner of the second monitor.

The actual problem seems to be, that when IS goes to launch the second account, it goes through the login fine, and then tries to launch the game window almost completely off-screen to the upper left of the main monitor, and then just dies on the second account, no error, no messages in event log.

I've been away for the summer, and I haven't been able to get this to work since I came back. I'm sure there have been many updates, but none that should be causing this.
The launcher is set to allow multiple instances.

[lax]

DirectX 11, on win 7 pro.

Did you try changing it to DirectX 9 mode to see if that changes anything? I did fix ISBoxer's monitor selection for DirectX 11 in the last few months. Changing the windowed mode setting in the game (in UserPreferences.ini if you can't get the game launched under ISBoxer) may fix this.

On a related note, have you checked for new video drivers?

then tries to launch the game window almost completely off-screen to the upper left of the main monitor

The game itself chooses where the window initially appears, and then ISBoxer will move it once the DirectX instance is set up for the window. If it is initially appearing off-screen, before ISBoxer moves it, then it might be a bad setting saved in your UserPreferences.ini files. If it is initially appearing in a normal position but then ISBoxer is moving it off-screen after, then it still sounds like your Window Layout isn't right for your monitors.

First, thank you Lax for your help here... I really appreciate it!
Second, life keeps intruding, but I've been trying to work this out, and finally to your questions:

I did try changing to DX9 mode. No dice.
I have updated drivers, no dice.
I've deleted my entire isboxer profile (chars, keys, layouts, everything), and made new.
The only thing that works, is to have both accounts on the same screen, and toggle between them. If I am IN a session, I can export a new ISBoxer config that works (second toon on alternate monitor), but the next time I reload, the second toon will not come up.
For the record, ISBoxer has my window layouts as (how to describe this?) Primary (Big screen) monitor as \\.\Display1, and my secondary (park toon) monitor as \\.\Display3
The second account still launches (after I login, and the login window is no longer up top, ie. I have to set focus to it, supply password, and click play), at the top left corner of \\.\Display1, and then never continues.

I haven't gone and unloaded isboxer, but I suppose that is my next step.

I have even tried swapping around video feeds for the monitors, but nothing is changing.

Oh, and If I launch the second account STANDALONE (rt click isboxer icon, character set slots, second slot) it still fails. Same deal, login screen shows, login click play, and it shows up a window in the top corner of \\.\Display1, and then bails out.

Any ideas?


**edit**
If I use the game launcher (that everything is pointed to), and login using my secondary account, it loads normally, full screen, on \\.\Display1
but even after trying to login on both accounts over and over alternating between, account 2 still won't launch from boxer.

Update - with more information...

I do think this is something to do with the game itself, or how hit handles its .ini files.

First: Display adapters
Primary display is 1920 x 1200 on a GeForce GTX580
Secondary display is 1680 x 1050 on the MoBo Intel HD 3000.

The windows desktop is extended primary to secondary.

The ONLY ISBoxer multi-account setup I can get to working, is "This Window Layout features stacked windows with no border, the size of the full screen, on \\.\DISPLAY1. Swapping disabled. Leaves space for the Windows taskbar. This style is great in conjunction with Video FX to see parts of, or all of, the other windows.".

Using that, both accounts (actually, up to 5 that I have tried) load and run fine. If I modify it at all (dragging one region to the second monitor, for example), and export to IS, it works if both accounts are up and at least at character selection, but the next time I launch the character set from the IS icon, the first loads fine, and the second loads again half off screen in the upper left corner of the primary display, then shuts down.

I have tried various DX modes, deleting the .ini files completely, uninstalling and re-installing IS and ISBoxer, and always have the same result. I do notice that when the second account fails to launch, the UserPreference-char.ini get some wonky numbers in the 'Resolution' and 'WindowedResolution' entries, they come out as a single DWORD (it seems), rather then say 1920x1200.

The working version (stacked) has the [Display] section of UserPreferences.ini as:
[Display]
AllowDesktopCompositing=True
AllowFakeFullScreen=True
AllowWindowResizing=True
Antialiasing=Disabled
ConfineFullScreenMouseCursor=True
FixedOutputScaling=Default
ForceFakeFullScreen=False
FullScreen=False
RefreshRate=Auto
Resolution=1024x768
SyncToRefresh=False
TripleBuffering=False
WindowedResolution=1920x1200


On the configurations with the second toon on the secondary display, I do see this entry in the lotroclient logs:
000000000.000: Initializing display with title 'The Lord of the Rings Online™'...
000000000.000: Device_WIN32::Init: called.
000000000.000: Device_WIN32::InitDEVICE| Detected operating system: Windows 7
000000000.000: Failed to start up graphics engine.
000000000.000: Device_WIN32::Cleanup: called.

Any ideas?
I can at least play now, but I'd like to figure this out, as it worked perfectly for, well, years.