Activating a Secondary Display on Windows 10 when no Monitor is Connected

There are situations where you need to simulate a second monitor being connected to your system. This is mostly needed for remote control applications or USB type monitors such as the Amyuni USB Mobile Monitor product. Prior to Windows 10, it was easy to simulate that a second monitor is connected by activating a VGA monitor through the display settings control panel.

The procedure prior to Windows 10 was the following:

• Right-click on the desktop and select „Screen Resolution“ or „Display Settings“
• Click the „Detect“ next to the main monitor
• Choose „Another display not detected“ -> Multiple displays -> Try to connect anyway on VGA
• This will add a second virtual monitor which you can then configure as a real monitor

Other solutions which would also work for Windows 10 would be to purchase a hardware dongle to connect to the HDMI, DVI or VGA connector of your system to simulate that a monitor is actually connected. There are even hand-made solutions that consist of soldering resistors on the pins of the VGA port and risk damaging your computer.

Windows 10 removed the option of activating a VGA monitor even if it wasn’t connected. We are providing here a simple and free solution to create a „software“ monitor on your system to use it as you used to prior to Windows 10, e.g. to create a second virtual monitor for USB Mobile Monitor.

Here is the procedure to add a virtual monitor to your system (Windows 10 Only!)

• Download our virtual display driver from https://www.amyuni.com/downloads/usbmmidd.zip
• Unpack the zip file to an empty folder, e.g. c:\temp\usbmmidd
• Make sure you read the License.txt file as with any other software product
• Open a command prompt window as Administrator (you cannot add a device to your system unless you „Run As Administrator“)
• Run the following commands:
  • cd c:\temp\usbmmid (or whatever destination folder you chose)
  • deviceinstaller64 install usbmmidd.inf usbmmidd
  • Make sure you see the message that the drivers are signed by Amyuni Technologies Inc. This is a confirmation that the drivers went through Microsoft driver signing procedure and are virus free
  • deviceinstaller64 enableidd 1If you are on a 32-bit system, replace „deviceinstaller64“ by „deviceinstaller“
    
    The included batch file usbmmidd.bat runs these commands automatically and selects between the 32- or 64-bit version of deviceinstaller.
    If you are not comfortable opening a command prompt and entering these commands, right-click on usbmmidd.bat and „Run As Administrator.“
    
    That’s it. You now have a high definition monitor in your Display Settings. The format is fixed for 1920×1080 pixels but you can position the monitor, extend the desktop or do whatever you do with a real monitor.
    
    To deactivate the virtual monitor, run the command:
    deviceinstaller64 enableidd 0
    
    to reactivate it:
    deviceinstaller64 enableidd 1
    
    To completely remove the drivers from your system, you can either go through the Device Manager and uninstall „USB Mobile Monitor Virtual Display“, or run the commands:
    deviceinstaller64 stop usbmmidd
    deviceinstaller64 remove usbmmid
  • Important!! After i installed the driver with usbmmidd.bat, the monitor setting was OK. After restarting the client, the monitor setting was returning to default value. To fix this, i create a batch wich i started everytime when i login on the client.
    • this batch has only this command: „deviceinstaller.exe enableidd 1“ (for 32 bit version)

For more details about USB Mobile Monitor, visit website: www.usbmobilemonitor.com