Dual monitor and mirroring peculiarity

I have an Imac running 10.5.8. Screen res is at 1680x1050. I also have an Apple Cinema HD screen connected to the iMac, running at 1920x1200.

The iMac is set to be the main screen, and always has the menu bar. Mirroring is normally off, but when I need to show something to someone on the other screen, setting mirroring on works perfectly.

Problem is when I switch off mirroring, all the windows for the various apps I have open all stay on the secondary HD screen instead of returning to the iMac.

How can I resolve this? Alternatively, is there a short cut I can use to bring all windows back to the iMac and force future windows to open on that instead of the secondary?

I am running Mac OS X (10.5.8). Any help gratefully received!

Welcome to the Forum. When the windows remain on the secondary screen where is the Menubar in Sys Prefs/Displays - On the iMac or secondary screen?


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Hiya

The menu bar stays on the primary screen (the iMac), and is on the same setting in the prefs. The windows seem to stay stuck to the seconadry screen (with no menubar)

Hence the problem!

Seems unusual - if i go to Mirroring on mine, then turn mirroring off, all the windows are on the Primary iMac. Altho i am on 10.6.4, Leopard should not be that different. U might have to start looking for a corrupt plist in your preferences folder.
How about trying a new Admin User to see if u get the same result there?
Could you have a plugin that is part of the issue?

How would I go about determining if a plist file is corrupt?

I've just run a disk repair, so will see if that makes a difference and report back.... If no change will try a new user account

Do the new user first - it may take a while for me to find an applicable plist file.

New user - same problem

repair disk - same problem. The only windows which don't stay on the secondary screen are the finder windows

Any other suggestions?

What screen were those windows on before you changed to mirrored mode?

They were all on the primary screen. I had dragged my parallels/windows window to the secondary screen, but browser, email, ichat, iwork etc were all on primary

Try moving this to desk top and restarting;
System Preferences/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.00xxxxxxxxxx.plist
From what i could see that is changed with Display being changed to Mirror and back.

if you want a second menu bar download secondary menu

Here;
Download SecondBar for Mac - Add a second menubar to a dual-monitor setup. MacUpdate Mac Software Downloads
works well