Full Screen Video on Second Monitor

For the longest time, I had been experiencing an issue with my laptop setup when playing videos. I have my laptop screen set as the primary monitor, and an LCD connected to the DVI port of the laptop set as the secondary monitor. The desktop is extended to the secondary monitor. Whenever I play videos using Windows Media Player 9, the video is displayed in a window on the primary screen, and full screen on the second monitor. If I drag the window to the second monitor, the primary monitor goes full screen and the second monitor gets the window. This was a minor nuisance, as I don't usually play videos, but it was a problem. Today I finally decided to hunt down the answer. I found that it had to do with the overlay settings for my NVidia graphics card. The overlay property for the card was set to automatically mirror video as an overlay on the other screen. Once I disabled the property, the full screen video was gone. I could still expand the WMP window to display full screen if I wanted, but I wasn't forced to see it on both screens.

If you are experiencing this issue as well, here are some step-by-step instructions on how to turn it off.

1. Right Click on your Desktop, and choose the Properties item
   
   
   Right-Click Desktop Menu
   
   
2. From the Display Properties Dialog, select the Settings Tab
   
   
   Display Properties Dialog Box
   
   
3. Click the Advanced button in the lower right corner
   
   
   Display Settings Tab
   
   
4. From the Advanced Settings Dialog box, choose the GeForce tab
   
   
   Advanced Settings Dialog Box
   
   
5. From the additional menu on the left, select the Overlay item
   
   
   GeForce Settings
   
   
6. On the Overlay Settings, notice that the Full Screen Device is set to Auto-Select.
   
   
   Overlay Settings
   
   
7. Change the Full Screen Device to Disabled
   
   
   Disabled Full Screen Device
   
   
8. Click the OK button
   
9. Click the OK button on the Display Properties Dialog box
   

Now when you play videos in Windows Media Player, the non-windowed screen will no longer play the video in full-screen mode. To revert to playing full screen, just go back through these instructions, and change the full screen device to Auto-Select.