Remote Desktop Connection not going full screen

I'm using a Dell Latitude laptop with two external displays. When I make a connection in Remote Desktop (Windows 7) and maximize the window it only resizes to the max resolution of my built-in display (1360 x 768), not the external monitors (1680 x 1050). I've seen a lot of answers which say to use Ctrl + Alt + Break, but that doesn't work for me -- it's the same size screen with a big black border around it. Is there any way to fix this? Like if I manually edit an .rdp file?

3 Answers

The below procedure worked for me on Windows 7:

1. Open "run" prompt
2. type mstsc.exe
3. click on "Options" option in the bottom-left corner of the "Remote Desktop Connection" popup
4. click on "Display" tab
5. Change "Display Configuration" to "Full Screen" by dragging the slider to extreme right.

When you are using a lot of different RDP destinations you may save one generic RDP file and then open it with the texteditor. Then add at the end of the textdocument

smart sizing:i:1
span monitor:i:1

And as well you may try to change the following attributes to your ressolution

desktopwidth:i:1366
desktopheight:i:768

This makes the session smart sizable. For me its pretty nice. There are a lot of different setting you can change see

As well you may look for a 3rd party RDP session manager.

1. Go to your run prompt and type mstsc to pull up your RDP client. (If you are using a shortcut you can right click and select properties to get to the correct place as well).

2. Click 'Advanced Options' on the bottom.

3. Modify the 'Display Resolution' option in order to get the option to set it on both screens, set full screen or specific resolutions, etc. This should fix your problems :)

Make sure to save the connection again or manually launch it from the connection tab to ensure it saves the settings.