Windows 10 update made most of the programs big and blurry

font smoothinghigh-dpiscalingwindowswindows 10

I recently upgraded to windows 10 from windows 8.1 pro. As a result, many of my programs are scaled big and blurry. Even the default windows one like device manager. See how it is kind of fuzzy and big?

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To fix this I have to right click on a program and go to its properties and check the box "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings.":

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Which is kind of annoying – I didn't have to do that before. For some programs though, I do not have this problem. It only seems to be for a certain set of them or something.

Here are my display settings:

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Can anyone help me with this? It is really annoying

Best Answer

Here is the solution that worked for me, running with scaling set to my desired 125%:

Open notepad and paste in the following three lines:

REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v DpiScalingVer /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00001018 /f REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v Win8DpiScaling /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001 /f REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v LogPixels /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000078 /f

Save the file as DPI_FIX.cmd someplace easy for you to find. Open the Group Policy Editor (enter gpedit.msc from the search bar). In User Configuration, click on Windows Settings then Scripts (Logon/Logoff). Double click Logon in the right pane. In the Scripts tab, click Add, then Browse, then navigate to your .cmd file, click Open, click OK, click Apply, click OK. Then sign out or reboot. Login to your account the first time after adding this script so it will be applied. It may not take effect the first time (if so sign out or reboot again). After that, it should work every time.

*Kudos to EShirou at Tenfourms for originally providing this solution.

Other things I tried that did NOT work:

  • Changing drivers.
  • Creating the above .cmd file and adding it to the the Startup folder or the Task Scheduler (it only worked on every OTHER sign in / reboot).
  • I couldn't even download the "blurry fix" .exe as the site would not load for me, but I do not want to risk running a strange .exe file every time I start the computer.