Monitor/font smoothing issues after XP clean install - Inspiron 1520

A bit of backstory: I have a Dell Inspiron 1520. It came with Vista and I hated it, so I did a clean install of XP. Using the "Installing Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 1520" thread, my laptop ran it beautifully. No problems, whatsoever.

It's been a couple years, and I decided to give Vista another try, erroneously assuming most of the kinks were worked out and it would be nice to use. It drove me just as nuts, so I attempted to go back to XP. It installs just fine, I go through all the sames steps I did before, install the drivers, get all the latest service updates through Windows Update.

Here's my problem. Fonts look horrible. There's no smoothness at all. I feel like I've been staring at an 8 bit video game for a long time. Things are also kind of bright, some colors also seem to be a little off, but I don't know if I'm just imagining that because I'm concentrating so hard.

Before it's suggested--I absolutely hate Cleartype and had never used it before, so it isn't an issue of Cleartype not being set right. I have it set to use standard font smoothing.

I made sure that "smooth edges of screen fonts" was checked, and it is. I played with it a few times, and there's no difference between when it's activated and not. It seems as if it's just NOT working.

I attempted another clean install, thinking perhaps something went wrong the first time, and there's no change.

My screen resolution is the same as before, 1280 by 800, and color quality is set to 32 bit.

Now, all that said, here's another problem I might have. My system calls for the Intel 965 drivers. I install those, the screen resolution goes to normal upon restart. However, during install, I get the "connect to yada yada for new hard ware drivers" prompt. I don't recall this happening before. If I hit cancel, it keeps asking, and in the end will tell me that no drivers were found and my new hardware wasn't installed. If I finally say yes, search for drivers, it installs as Plug and Play, and I'm almost certain that this wasn't how it was before. I'm wondering if this is not somehow related to my problem?

I really cannot stand to look at my screen like this, and using Cleartype is not a solution. Both are giving me a serious headache. Any help to remedy this would be much appreciated.

 

Most bizarre. Do you remember if everything looked okay before you installed the video card drivers? If so, it's probably a driver problem. If XP fonts looked weird before you installed any video drivers there's a bigger problem - the default fallback VGA drivers for when you haven't installed any video drivers should display everything correctly even though they're pretty pitiful overall. Perhaps your XP disc got corrupted somehow - that is a possibility with CD's.

The only other thing I can think of it maybe you forgot to install the chipset driver either this time or the first time, and that's causing problems. It's recommended to install it before all other drivers. I don't think it would cause problems, but it's possible.

You seem to have tried the usual stuff, though. Good luck - post back here with results.

- Another 1520 user who switched from Vista to XP

 

First, thank you for such a rapid response.

My XP disc (which is SP2) came from that whole thing where you burnt your copy from XP, instead of just a disc coming in the box with your PC. It was from my desktop PC (also a Dell), but I've never had a problem installing it on other configurations. I just used it a few days ago to install XP on an eMachine computer for a friend and it was fine, and it's installing and working fine on my laptop so I don't think it's corruption of the disc.

Yes, everything was fine before. Which is why it's driving me so crazy, I just can't figure out what it is. I did install Chipset before I did anything. I also thought that maybe I somehow downloaded and installed the wrong drivers...so I went to the site, made sure I followed the right links, downloaded them again, and still, same result. It also continutes to give me the windows prompt to install drivers for a plug and play monitor. I tried updgrading to SP3 before installing the drivers on the offchance that might do something, but no luck.

I don't know if it's even really possible but at this point, unless I'm missing something huge, the only thing I can think of is that there's something wrong with the drivers themselves. The Dell site says they were updated in April, which was after I installed XP on my laptop for the first time so it was a different version I used before. I would think that if it were a corruption in the drivers it would've been remedied by now. But that's the only difference between this install and the last one.

 

UPDATE: Older versions of the drivers aren't working, either. There were two available on Dell.com. I tried both. One makes a slight difference, but only in that words are blurry. I'm getting very frustrated.