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    custom DPI settings cause Vista to freak?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by zoogle, Mar 19, 2008.

  1. zoogle

    zoogle Notebook Consultant

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    The laptop you see in my sig in the one in question. It's running Windows Vista on a 1400x900 14.1" widescreen which makes certain text difficult to read for my dad, who uses the laptop whenever I'm at home. Being the wonderful son I am :D, I raised the DPI settings from 96 to 110 to make the teeny text more readable for him. The problem is that after a while, Vista will just bug out on me and the system tray will shift on top of the Start button, the open windows in the taskbar will "disappear", attempting to open any new window will just result in nothing being displayed.

    However, the window DOES register as being there, it just isn't appearing there (for example, opening Firefox and right-clicking will give me the usual browser option menu). It seems to crash programs because my active download through Firefox completely died. Nothing short of killing explorer.exe and restarting it through the task manager fixes the problem. I even wrote a batch file that restarted explorer.exe while I tried to figure things out.

    Changing the DPI setting back down to 96 seems to get rid of the problem. Do any of you have any suggestions? This is a week-old machine so I don't think it's a registry problem. Perhaps crummy X3100 driver compatibility with Vista? I'm at a total loss since the DPI setting has been around for a long time in Windows and I expected it to work correctly.
     
    zoogle, Mar 19, 2008
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  2. jimc

    jimc Notebook Consultant

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    Have you tried 120? Because for me any custom DPI setting doesn't work as well as either 96 or 120
     
    jimc, Mar 19, 2008
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  3. zoogle

    zoogle Notebook Consultant

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    I don't think 120 causes any problems but it's kind of too large. When you say doesn't work well, do things crash for you as well? I might just write a batch file that runs anytime he logs on and off his account which will change the DPI settings automatically for me.....hrmmm....
     
    zoogle, Mar 20, 2008
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  4. qhn

    qhn Notebook User

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    a second account is a good idea.

    U could also try to adjust font/menu sizes within display advanced properties. The dpi change causing vista to go haywire has lots to do with gpu drivers than windows

    within browser u can also set the font size independent from windows

    cheers ...
     
    qhn, Mar 20, 2008
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  5. zoogle

    zoogle Notebook Consultant

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    Thanks a bunch for the tips. I'll try them out.
     
    zoogle, Mar 20, 2008
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  6. jimc

    jimc Notebook Consultant

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    Doesn't crash for me but looks weird, so I changed it back. Maybe I haven't used it enough for it to crash?
     
    jimc, Mar 20, 2008
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