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windows 7 - High DPI messes up text and icons; did not happen before reformat


I have two 2560x1440 monitors running off an ATI Radeon 6970 on Windows 7.


Before reformatting, I had adjusted the DPI to 120 via Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Display > "Medium - 125%". I am not entirely sure, but I think I had checked "Use Windows XP style DPI scaling" (which is the default for DPI less than 144 I believe). My apps looked fine; the text size was larger, but it never really caused any problems.


However, upon reformatting, I tried to do the same thing and have ended up with messed up text and icons in my apps. Examples:


Outlook icons are resized improperly


In Outlook, the icons are resized in crazy ways and look much worse, and the text---except for the actual message list---is oversized.


muTorrent text overlaps


In muTorrent, the text is too large to fit in its bounding boxes, and gets clipped.


I have tried right-clicking on the program and choosing Properties > Compatibility > Disable display scaling on high DPI settings; this does nothing.


Also of note: in Windows Explorer, things look fine; the text is not comically oversized and the icons are not scaled up.


Any ideas?



Answer



Of course I solve this minutes after posting it, despite a couple days of banging my head against the wall X_x.


If I switch to Windows Classic theme under Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization, then back to Windows 7 (Aero) theme, the fonts get resized back to reasonable and the icons stop getting scaled weirdly.


So, somehow my font size and/or DPI scaling got tied to my theme. I believe this occured because I experimented with 144 DPI (150%) for a few minutes, during which time I might have mucked around with theme settings, perhaps switching from Basic (the default) to Aero.


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