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I can't change the dpi setting on my desktop after reinstalling windows xp. Text and boxes appear too large for the small monitor I ahve. Any ideas?

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I am unable to change the dpi setting(it's greyed out) or screen size from the normal ways I have tried. After needing to reinstall windows xp on my Dell desktop ( several years old). Is there any way to resize the appearance of text and pop up boxes to fit on my monitor better?

I am unable to change the dpi setting(it's greyed out) or screen size from the normal ways I have tried. After needing to reinstall windows xp on my Dell desktop ( several years old). Is there any way to resize the appearance of text and pop up boxes to fit on my monitor better?

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I have to admit I don't remember the details of system DPI on Windows XP...

Can you at least get Windows to use the native resolution of your monitor?

Perhaps it would help to update your graphics driver software. This article lists safe sites to check: Upgrade your graphics drivers to use hardware acceleration and WebGL.

(Also, make sure you have Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, assuming it's still available from Microsoft.)


You can change a Firefox setting to globally shrink everything in the browser, but this may create a somewhat gritty appearance. If you want to try it anyway, here's what you would do:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the filter box, type or paste pix and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and change its value to 1.0 for a standard 96 dpi font size.

If this is still too large, try typing 0.9 for 90% of normal, or 0.8 for 80% of normal.

You may need to switch back and forth to other windows/tabs to see how it's affecting them.

Please be careful not to enter a super-small value as then you'll need to go to disk and edit or remove a settings file to get back to a usable font size.