Taskbar icons look bad with DPI settings changed

Xirix · 01 Mar 2016

So I'm using a widescreen monitor now after years of a 4:3 one, I have it set to the recommended 1920x1080, and I have the DPI set to medium (125%) since without it everything is way too small for me.

It looks pretty alright for the most part, but taskbar icons, particulary the ones in the bottom right, some look extremely pixelled. I read somewhere that for whatever reason Windows 7 doesn't automatically choose a more appropriate icon size in this case and just goes for a 16x16 and lets the magnifier do the rest, resulting in it looking ugly.

Is there a way to force Windows to use one of the higher quality icons for the taskbar? I don't mind if it's a third party tweaking program as long as it does it.

rvcjew · 01 Mar 2016

Welcome to poor scaling of certain things, I'v never found a fix. Windows ten does it too, I think it matters if the app dev thought about this and made a super high res icon or maybe their logo just looks bad scaled. look at skype, eset, and the white arrow (puush) on mine.

ThrashZone · 01 Mar 2016

Hi,
You're not showing much at all in the way of system spec's so it's fairly impossible to give you any real help
Use the link above my signature to use the forums upload utility to do it for you

Otherwise How are you connecting to the monitor dvi/ vga/ hdmi..

Are you using on board graphic's or a dedicated graphic's card ??

Xirix · 01 Mar 2016

I would like to think my computer is powerful enough for that to not be an issue, I've filled in my details. That's kind of dissapointing to see it's still a thing on Windows 10...

But the thing that weirds me out more is, I have Firefox on my taskbar as a quicklaunch (small icons), when it's not open the icon looks perfectly fine. When Firefox is launched it begins all crappy looking, despite being the same size.

Monitor is connected with DVI.

ThrashZone · 01 Mar 2016

Hi,
Okay that is a lot better
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Have you tried using a windows classic desktop theme to see if there's any difference ?

GPU Specifications
The ATI HD 5700 has a GPU clock speed of 650 MHz, which is 27% slower than the average video graphics card, which is around 889 MHz.

Try connecting using hdmi
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rvcjew · 01 Mar 2016

ThrashZone said:

Have you tried using a windows classic desktop theme to see if there's any difference ?

This was my next question I am also curious if it's an areo issue.

ThrashZone · 01 Mar 2016

Hi,
Every time i read about scaling issues there is always 1 common hardware Radeon/ amd.
Older ones which may not like Internet explorer's scaling or aero in general

I've found Pale moon x64 has very poor page zoom scaling on some sites.
And ie of all version I've had no issues with bare minimum i'll call it page zoom rates or dpi at 125% and a page zoom of 150%
Using NVidia goodies though or even Intel on board graphic's.

I haven't noticed any win-10 scaling issues though with it's bare minimum GUI