The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    How to Hack DPI settings in Windows 7 (likely works for Vista too)

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Leoben, Jun 21, 2011.

  1. Leoben

    Leoben Cylon

    Reputations:
    164
    Messages:
    735
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I've been wishing my laptop display resolution was higher than 1280x800 for a while now.

    I decided earlier today to mess around with windows' DPI. The front end however only lets you raise the DPI (make things bigger). So I did a bit of googling and found the back-end way, via the registry.

    [Insert token warning about messing with your registry here.]

    It was actually pretty easy. In regedit (if you don't know what this is stop here please), go to HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG>Software>Fonts. Change the decimal value of LogPixels from the default of 96 to something lower. I went for 72 (75% of "normal" DPI). Then reboot.

    Most things resized nicely on reboot. Firefox however only "half" a resized, the menus got smaller but the actual webpage didn't. As a work around I grabbed the "Default Zoom Level" addon for it and set the default zoom to 75%.

    For me the net result is my 1280x800 display is now pretending to be a 1706x1066 display. I've attached a screen capture, what do you think?
     

    Attached Files:

    Leoben, Jun 21, 2011
    #1
  2. anseio

    anseio All ways are my ways.

    Reputations:
    1,940
    Messages:
    2,418
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Cool stuff!

    "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses all of the letters in the english alphabet.
     
    anseio, Jun 21, 2011
    #2
  3. Leoben

    Leoben Cylon

    Reputations:
    164
    Messages:
    735
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Ah yes, it's been a while since typing classes. I'd forgotten the exact phrase.
     
    Leoben, Jun 21, 2011
    #3
  4. melthd

    melthd Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    95
    Messages:
    494
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    i don't really get what OP means.. @@

    i thought you could just change DPI at the Personalize window...
     
    melthd, Jun 22, 2011
    #4
  5. ExMM

    ExMM Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    185
    Messages:
    555
    Likes Received:
    30
    Trophy Points:
    41
    I think I wanna tried that too!! :D
     
    ExMM, Jun 22, 2011
    #5
  6. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    3,905
    Messages:
    6,116
    Likes Received:
    89
    Trophy Points:
    216
    You can change it there, but you can only make text bigger and not smaller.
     
    namaiki, Jun 22, 2011
    #6