Vista can no longer scale down DPI!

Does anyone know how to scale down the DPI in Vista? It appears you can only scale up - IE, right click on the desktop to go to personalization, click adjust dpi settings. There it shows 96 and 120. If you click custom, you get the ruler and the percentage box, but you can NOT enter in a value smaller than 100% - it just flips back to 100% if you try.

There has got to be a workaround for this. Needless to say, on XP, you could scale up and down freely. I've been googling for half an hour with no success. Is this yet another "feature" of Vista, disabled for our convenience?

 

LOL. What mouse are you using?

There must be a way around? Have you tried googling any special software that will do it for you? I've got no idea sorry.

I like the bit you said about disabled for our convenience - do you mind if I quote you on that?

Sorry I couldn't be of more help,

 

Did you restart the computer after making the changes?

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Wi...41d1033.mspx?wt_svl=10120VHa1&mg_id=10120VHb1

 

Hi mattireland,

I'm using a laptop with a Synaptic touchpad. I've been googling nonstop, and even went into the registry and saw where the default numbers were (computer\hkey_current_user\control panel\desktop\windowmetrics is one of them), but I couldn't change it. And yes, you can use the phrase :^)

Hey kegobeer,

Yup, I restarted, but no difference. Even before restarting, when you type in a number below 100%, within 2 seconds, it switches before your eyes back to 100%. And if you try to drag the ruler to the left (the way you could in XP) in order to reduce it, you can't go below 100%. You can drag it to the right, and increase up to 500%, but not below 100. Bah.

I'm still looking. I just discovered scaling a few weeks ago in XP, and was hoping to be able to make use of it in Vista. So far though, no deal.

 

I just tried it myself and can see where overclocker is coming from. The dialog box where you set the % resets itself to 100% even if you try to scale it lower than 100%--thus a restart would be futile

 

From what I've read so far, you can scale up to 500%, but you can't go below 96 DPI. Also - everything I've seen deals with Aero, so I don't know if non-Aero users can scale properly.

 

I was thinking about that, so I turned it off, and tried Basic + Windows Classic; neither of them worked.

Why oh why did they disable this?

Incidentally, I caught a glimpse of what it *would* have looked like, had it worked, while installing through XP. I run mine at 90% of 96, and the Vista installation window that pops up was much sleeker, as I remember it. Was looking forward to using thin windows in Vista...bah.

Maybe they're saving it for SP1...though I can't imagine why...

 

It's Microsoft's idea of 'innovation' and 'progress'. Out with the old and in with the new!

 

You might want to try the Microsoft forums, the Microsoft newsgroups on the usenet, and the MSDN site for more information.