Windows 10: Blurry text

Hello everyone *Smile

I’m running the latest, leaked, Windows 10 10147 build and everything works fine on my system. There is one thing though I have observed since the beginning, meaning in earlier builds, as well. And that is blurry text on some Windows components like the Device Manager, the Task Scheduler, the Event Viewer, the Disk Management, and others. I also see this blurry text on the installers of the programs I am installing, but also on some programs themselves. I have managed to resolve this by ticking "Disable Display Scaling On High DPI Settings" for these applications. When it comes to all those Windows components I’ve already mentioned though, I have not managed to resolve this yet...


The following two screenshots show my monitor’s specifications. I always run them on their native resolution. And I always set both of them at 125% DPI zoom because if I will not, everything appears too minuscule.

HP ZR2440w




DELL U2311H






On Windows 7 64bit Home Premium I always use 125% (Medium) as well, and I never had any similar issues (blurry text).
Here is how (some of) those Windows components display on my Windows 7 installation and how they look on Windows 10. By the way, On Windows 10 I use the "Recommended Settings", for 125%, and not a Custom DPI.

Win 7




Win 10





Perhaps these screenshots display differently on your monitors so here is a comparison of (a part of) the Device Manager between the two OSes, magnified at 400% :





I have never used Win 8 or Win 8.1, this is new to me, so I’d like to ask you:
1) Is this “normal” for my displays?
2) Is there anything I can do to fix this because I dislike this blurriness?

I have installed and use the latest NVIDIA driver on both my Operating Systems.

Thanks in advance for your help.

PS: I’ve also reported this on the feedback.

:)

 

Updated to Windows 10, why are some programs blurry?

Just updated to Windows 10 and it's fantastic so far! However, some programs now have blurry and/or huge text. For example, Spotify now has blurry text and AIM now has ridiculously large and blurry text. How can I change this so that they're back to normal?

 

Fonts in Windows 10 blurry

Thanks I will try what you said, it's very frustrating that part of the operating system looks sharp while other parts look blurry. I've noticed this on a few computer systems that I have worked on. For example on the computer my grandmother uses I upgraded
here Windows 7 Pro machine which worked fine. Windows 10 works fine it's just some text is so blurry it's not even really readable. Example is just the mail app, the mail text is way blurry and the envelope looks blurry at all which is not even text. She
has a few program icons and text that look blurry.

 

Hey, can you try something different? I have not experienced blurry text. I have a 1920x1280 full HD ASUS Monitor and yes the same thing in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 for me, everything was very small, but changing the DPI settings to 125% from the native 100% made everything worse from desktop gadgets to certain programs that did not adjust well to higher then the native DPI of 96pt 100% so I always increased the text sizes and icon sizes and left DPI alone.

However, I recently discovered something cool in Windows 10. I'm using the TP build 10130. Adjust your monitor to its native resolution of 1920x1080 (full HD). Revert the DPI settings, do not make any DPI changes in advanced or anything like that, leave it at the native 100% that comes with Windows.

Then go START > PC SETTINGS > DISPLAY

You will see an option that says: Change the size of text, apps, and other items: 100% (recommended)

Bump this up to 125% and what this does is ZOOM the entire Windows to 125% while leaving the DPI at 100%. I did this and it made things nice and bigger without having blurry text or blurry programs like screwing around with DPI settings. I find that DPI settings never worked correctly for me, ever. Try this method. Revert to stock DPI in Windows 10 and just bump up the zoom. It will zoom the entire O/S and then report back on text to see if you are still having blurry issues. I am not having any when I tried this method.

 

Hello heyyahblah and thank you for your reply!

If you mean the following menu then this is how I have it already set, on both of my monitors. Those Windows components appear with blurry text on both of them. I never touched anything else. And my apologies for mentioning the term "DPI" on my initial post - I've corrected it now. I meant the "zooming".







ps: is there a way to put these big screenshots in a spoiler?

 

Ahh, OK ... I see now. Yes, looks like you have set it up correctly in Windows 10, that is exactly how I have it on mine. 125% Looks like you did it correctly.

I wish I could give you a better answer, but unfortunately I cannot as I only use 1 monitor and do not have a dual display setting. You are using those 2 monitors simultaneously correct? I notice that one of your monitors HP ZR2440w has a different resolution then the other, with a different aspect ratio and DPI, etc. I'm not an expert on dual displays, so maybe someone could help you with that, could be a Windows 10 glitch / monitor setup glitch, I am not sure.

Sorry I couldnt be more helpful

 

No worries, and thank you very much for your support! *Smile

Yes, I use these two monitors. My HP is using DisplayPort and my DELL is using a DVI connection. I'm sure it doesn't matter - just mentioning it. I can disconnect my DELL and leave my HP only, just to try, but I do not think it will make any difference. What puzzles me is that on Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium -my current main OS- everything displays great. I never had any issues like these, and as I already said I use 125% (Medium) on Windows 7. I don't know IF there have been any changes on how things are displayed, after Win 7.

Finally, I have tried to just "Change only the text size" from the respective menu. I've brought everything in that menu (Title bars, Menus, etc) to "12". This works well with these Windows components, they are not blurry anymore, but...it has bad effects on Office 2016 which I'm previewing as well, and the worst of all : it does not have any effect on HWiNFO64, the only program which starts at logon and I regularly observe. This is the worst...

Any other ideas, opinions, or at least an explanation about why this is happening would be genuinely appreciated!

Thank you. *Smile

 

Hey, you know it doesn't hurt to disconnect the monitor (the DVI-D DELL) and just leave the HP in the display port, power down and boot up at 125% with only 1 monitor and have a look around the O/S and see if its blurry or not. First try with the HP and then with the DELL see if 1 or the other is blurry or if not blurry at all, or only when you have a dual-display, then you can rule out the screens and it could either be a) Windows 10 itself buggy or b) Drivers from Nvidia that are not quite ready yet for 10.

It would be worth the try if you have the time to play around. Then you can always submit bug reports to M/S and Nvidia so when it goes live they know if its related to one or the other *Wink

 

I'm not seeing the blurry text here on 10130 with Intel HD Graphics. Actually looks better at 125%!

 

heyyahblah

Thanks for the suggestion, I have tried it this morning. The result is the same, on both of my monitors. Since you have this ASUS monitor tell me, please : does the title bar of the "Device Manager", for example, display the same as the rest of the text in the Device Manager, in your system? If you will look at my screenshots from Windows 10 you will observe that the title bar looks different than the rest, below. The rest of the text appears kind of "bolded", kind of blurry, not as crisp and crystal clear, as it displays on Windows 7. Can you please post a screenshot of your Device Manager? *Smile


Finally, have I posted this thread of mine in the wrong section? Too few replies I get - too bad, because I'm only trying to understand what the problem is. I've posted on the "General Discussion" so that more people would read my thread.


linw

Glad that it works for you! What is your monitor's specifications?

 

My monitor is a Benq E2200 HD DVI set to 1920 x 1080.

 

The "Why" is not hard to explain - but it can be long-winded!

Windows, since Windows 8 appeared, is optimized for tablet/handheld/mobile displays which can be viewed interchangeably in either "portrait" or "landscape" orientation. It does not always look good on all desktop monitors and laptop screens, especially smaller screen sizes.

Before handheld computing, the great majority of desktop monitors were only used in landscape mode, and it was possible to smooth the text fonts using techniques such as "ClearType" which is a type of "subpixel rendering". This depends on each pixel on a colour LCD screen consisting of a red, green and blue vertical band making up each square pixel (an idea carried on from the Sony Trinitron CRT construction, whereas older CRTs used circular colour cells in a hexagonal array).

An explanation can be found here:

Understanding Sub-Pixel (LCD Screen) Anti-Aliased Font Rendering

With handheld screens using both orientations, they do not use vertical subpixel bands. "ClearType" does not work on these screens.

Instead, in order to smooth screen fonts on any type of screen, a monochrome "antialiasing" technique is used by most modern Windows Apps and especially Windows Internet Explorer, and all Microsoft internet pages.

I find that grey scale antialiasing makes some vertical lines blurry in Internet Explorer, but Chrome is generally much sharper, until I visit Microsoft webpages, and others that use the same technology, like my bank, which look better thru IE. This is because a vertical line may spread over 3 pixels with antialiasing, but may only be about 1.7 pixels using subpixel rendering. Horizontal lines like strikeouts are not blurry.

What can you do? In System Properties, Performance Options, Visual Effects, you can try unchecking "Smooth edges of screen fonts" - which is how things were by default in classic XP, I seem to recall.

In Display, Adjust ClearType text, you can try adjusting the ClearType for best clarity and then toggle it on or off to see the difference.

Native screen resolution for your monitor is always the best option, so an up-to-date graphics driver specifically for your graphics chip will give you a better visual experience than Microsoft generic Video drivers, which can limit screen resolutions available. Usually 100% scaling is preferable, and standard text sizes, and if you can find a specific monitor driver, all the better - these may come with utilities that help adjust the screen for best brightness, contrast, gamma, and colour temperature to suit your vision.

Windows 10 has the Spartan Project, soon to become Microsoft Edge, but you can still try different browsers, like Firefox, Chrome or Opera, and then Safari for the Apple viewpoint, and download and burn a live linux disk such as Linux Mint, and try it out on your hardware for a different perspective altogether. Using the browser zoom control also can offer clearer text, by either enlarging or reducing the effective webpage size.

 

Fafhrd

Thank you for your explanation and your suggestions. I have tried the "Clear Type" and the "Smooth edges of screen fonts" features that you've suggested but the result is always (much) worst in comparison to leaving these two features at their defaults.

I would like to underline that, as can be seen from my initial (first) post, I have never faced any kind of text appearance issues with any browser or other program that I regularly use. IF I would have faced such issues with Google Chrome, my current default browser, or other programs that I use daily, for hours, I would have wiped out Windows 10 from my system completely, and I would not consider even thinking about using them again, at least not until I would replace both of my monitors.

Right now, however, I see this blurry - not crisp text only on those Windows components I mention on my first post. The truth is that I see this blurriness on some programs (and their installers), as well. CPU-Z is one example. I already resolved this, though. By ticking "Disable Display Scaling On High DPI Settings", for all these programs.

Oh, and I always use the latest NVIDIA driver + my monitors' native resolution. Always.

Later today I will try to "work" a little bit with that option called "Change only the text size".

My impression, so far, is that this is something I will have to learn to live with... Just to learn something new out of all of this, though, tell me please from what exactly does this crispiness but also the appropriate text size really depends? Does it have to do with the dot pitch and the inches of a monitor? What is the relationship? In other, simpler, words :

- What specifications should a monitor - of 24" or bigger - have to display all the text crisp, sharp and at around size "11" or "12". For this last figure I'm not sure I express it correctly, but to understand me imagine a desktop of 125% zoom (or DPI?).

Thank you.

 

Hello again

After setting the "Zoom"[*] to 100% on both of my monitors, I have "played" a little bit with the "Change only the text size" feature, on Windows 10 TP, build 10147. The results can be seen in the following screenshot :





As you can observe the blurriness in the Device Manager's text has been fixed! Similarly, on other Windows components like the Disk Management and others the text now has the appropriate size and crispiness / clarity. This feature though has caused problems in text displaying on other applications, like the Aquasuite in which text is now overlapping or in HWiNFO64 where the text in the Sensor Panel does not increase its size, it stays too small. I bypass this though, let's consider it a problem of these applications specifically and let's assume that their developers should adapt them.

- Why doesn't the text in the properties of my GPU get set to "12" ?
- Why doesn't the text in the "Home" menu, for example, of the File Explorer get bigger?

In the "Change only the text size" drop-down menu I have set everything to "12". Not everything however gets set to "12"!
Is this the way it is supposed to work or is this a glitch / bug?


[*] : "Zoom" means the "use these display settings" in the Display window. I had this set to 125% but in this example I set it to 100%.

 

These may yet get fixed as Windows 10 evolves - keep sending them feedback! There must still be old snippets of code in the dlls that control the appearance of property dialogs that do not respond to global changes in screen font sizes. There may be registry hacks possible though?*

As far as ribbonzes are concerned - we hates them, oh yes we does! They will eventually be rethought and something else, equally obscene, will be promoted as the way to go for Windows app task control.

Still, everything is looking sharp now, even if it's too small to see!

* How to Access Option and Change Font Size, Color in Windows 8 and Later? - AskVG

Now this hack requires that you use the functionality of Windows 7 to get the settings right, using the appearance dialogs then take a backup of these registry keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Colors
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Next, you need to take these reg files to your Windows 10 system and backup these three keys. Next run the 3 .reg files from the Windows 7 system to update the registry values in Windows 10, and the font sizes should be how you want them.