Identifying displays

Question

I am trying to identify a screen in a multi-monitor setup to save some data linked to that screen. How can I reliable identify a screen, also after a reboot?

I am aware of the Screen class in .Net but Screen.DeviceName seems not be consistently pointing to one screen (for example after installing a new graphics driver).

Do you really expect to be able to change your device drivers and still keep track of a certain screen? The real question is, why would you want to do that? — Kendall Frey, May 19 '12 at 21:42
Well, because I am writing a little multi-monitor tool and need to save settings for each screen. — Jelle Vergeer, May 19 '12 at 21:50

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

0

Try WMI instead of WinForms.

The following post shows how to get monitors and their details (s. DisplayDetails class e.g.): Monitor ID and Serial Number

Edit:

My suggestion:

using System.Management;

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("root\\CIMV2", "SELECT * FROM Win32_DesktopMonitor");     
foreach (ManagementObject obj in searcher.Get())
    Console.WriteLine("PNP Device ID: {0}", obj ["PNPDeviceID"]);

edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

Community

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answered May 20 '12 at 18:08

I have two monitors and that query returns only one – Antonio Bakula May 20 '12 at 18:24

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 29 '12 at 12:11

I solved this by getting the DeviceID with the EnumDisplayDevices API. Seems to be unique for each screen and does not change after a driver update for example.

WMI is out of the question for me as I tried it before and it only returns one monitor with my multi-monitor setup.

Identifying displays

2 Answers2