Dual Monitor Problems with Vista

Question

I have a Lenovo T61 laptop running Vista ultimate 32 bit, SP1. I schlep this back and forth from home to work and put it in docking stations at each location. The docking stations have external monitors attached. At work I have a Viewsonic VX2035wm 20" Wide screen, (16:10) monitor with optimum resolution of 1680x1050. At home I have a Viewsonic VA912b 19" standard aspect ratio monitor with a suggested resolution of 1280x1024.
I typically run in dual monitor mode using my laptop display and the external monitor and extend the display across both monitors. Sometimes I run with the laptop display as the primary monitor, sometimes the external is the primary.
When I take my system from one location to another, generally upon boot or resume it recognizes the different monitor configurations and adjusts the display properties accordingly. However, about once a week I have a problem. For example, I shutdown at home, came into work and attempted to boot the system. Upon boot my external monitor displayed a frequency out of range error and did not display anything else. I suspect that the external port was configured to a setting that was not supported by the monitor. It appears that this was the primary display because my laptop only showed the background and the desktop did not display. Since nothing was displayed, I couldn't click the start menu, any icons, etc. I tried to adjust the monitor configuration by right clicking the laptop screen and selecting personalize, but the personalization dialog would not show up and I suspect that it went to the blanked out external monitor.
Please advise on how I can handle this situation. Is there any way to move the display from the external to the notebook when this happens? I noticed that Viewsonic has Vista drivers listed on their web site. Would it help to download and install these? Is there anything else you can suggest?

Answer 1

The main point of posting this topic was to point out the appalling service offered by Adobe but, of course resolving this issue would be nice also.
So here goes;
Dual monitor issue (Applies to CS4 applications; Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc. but not Flash or Dreamweaver or any other manufacturers software).
I have 2 monitors installed with Windows Vista 64bit, using Nvidia Quadro FX 1700:
-1280 x 1024 (primary display on the left) &
-1440 x 900 (on the right)
With a CS4 application maximised in the larger monitor, all the drop down menus display fine, if the chosen drop-down menu is taller than the height of the monitor (fonts, for instance), an arrow appears at the bottom of the menu so that I can scroll down the rest of the menu. If I then reduce the size of the CS4 application window, move it to the smaller monitor and maximised it again, the drop-down menu (which displayed and functioned fine in the primary monitor) is cropped off so I can't access the rest of the menu.
This might seem a minor irritation, but for batch-processing of merged files (the main purpose for having 2 monitors) CS4 makes the 2nd monitor redundant.
Another, less irritating issue (again, only with the applications named above) is that the window when maximised in the secondary monitor 'hangs over' into the primary monitor.