Blurry Icons

I have a Dell Inspiron E1705 running Windows XP and it's a great machine. However I'm noticing that the icons in my system tray (the other icons are fine) are blurred and distoreted - for example the Outlook icon in the quick launch. I have a 17" UXGA TrueLife Screen (I've etablished I have the Samsung version) and is running at 1900 x 1200 (the native resolution).

I've hooked up my notebook to an LCD monitor which which I know displays crystal clear icons and I get distorted/blurry icons on that panel too (the notebook changes the resolution to the native 1280 x 1024 resolution of that notebook). From this I am sure the notebook screen is not at fault.

Does anyone have suggestions as to how I get my crystal clear icons. Are there some hidden Windows XP settings that I can change?

Cheers,
Titan

 

Strange... Created a new user and logged in with that user and the icons are perfect! So it's obviously some strange setting that has been messed up on my profile :S

Anyone got any ideas?

 

That's typical or shall I say by design with Truelife

http://support.dell.com/support/top...ument?dn=1091681&l=en&langid=1&c=us&cs=&s=gen

Try using the optimized screen resolution and enable the cleartype in Windows. If after doing that.. it remain blurred, try to use the Cleartype Tuner by Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx
See also http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx

 

See if the cleartype is enabled in that new user profile then check whether it is disable in the other user profile then you will nail which is the culprit

 

Thanks for you assistance DonnaB. However, it still doesnt fix it though.

It appears that this is happening on my profile with all "small icons" - so if I change the start menu icons to small from large, then I encounter this problem.

Also, I've checked and the colour depth is not on 256 - strange problem.

 

How about the dpi of your display properties?
Try to put back the original size of the fonts then set the dpi to higher e.g. 120 dpi.
When I had i630m, that is my problem.. images are blurred and got small icons which is hard to read. I set it from 90 dpi to 120.. it didn't turn well but better than 90 dpi.
BTW what screen resolution do you use?

 

I tried that too.. It's driving me crazy now that I'm trying to solve it and can't.

It's as if the icons aren't smoothed or as if antialiasing is not on. I might just use the new login and delete my old one. It's a new machine, so I don't think it will take too long to reconfigure my applications.

If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to let us know.

 

Try checking your display settings

 

try going into your display properties under "appearance" > "advanced". play with your title bar size. a click or two up or down and it should be crystal clear...

my settings are...

Active Title Bar Size = 18

EDIT: oh, you may also have logoff/on or reboot to see the actual changes on your taskbar.