fuzzy looking letters

[Guest]

When I open Word, Excel, Internet Explorer or even the Start menu and all the
things within it, the letters/words look fuzzy. Even as I am writing in
this, the letters appear unrefined and hazy. They are not crisp and clear. It
seems as though the letters/words have a fuzz around them. It is very
noticable, especially on white backgrounds. Pictures are clear. Eg. If I go
to www.yahoo.com, the pictures and images are crisp and sharp but the words
and letters are fuzzy. How can one fix this issue? Regards, J.

 

[Andrew]

Might not be the same issue but I have seen this caused by forcing
antialising on a video card and then running a Java application. Solution
is to set antialiasing to 'appliation controlled' in the video card driver
settings.

Andy

 

[Mary Sauer]

Get the ClearType Powertool.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

 

[Geoman]

When I open Word, Excel, Internet Explorer or even the Start menu an
all the
things within it, the letters/words look fuzzy. Even as I am writin
in
this, the letters appear unrefined and hazy. They are not crisp an
clear. It
seems as though the letters/words have a fuzz around them. It is very
noticable, especially on white backgrounds. Pictures are clear. Eg
If I go
to www.yahoo.com, the pictures and images are crisp and sharp but th
words
and letters are fuzzy. How can one fix this issue? Regards, J.

You have not mentioned your system, so I can only tell you what I hav
discovered by experience.

I had a new 19"LCD Toshiba installed on an IBM Intel motherboard wit
on board graphics. I could not get the print to look good and tried th
ClearType. I posted this on forums asking about video cards and ever
reply was insulting, saying that my assumption that LCD's nee
improvement or the on line video with Intel 850GB board wasn't goo
enought for LCD running XP. I then bought a new board to build anothe
for my daughter, I decided to give the board a chance on my compute
and the text turned out PERFECT. I then put the monitor on two othe
computers and the problem followed where there wasn't a dedicated vide
card. BTW, I tried ClearType and what a pain and the results
experienced always seemed like a band aid. THe pictures on this scree
were terrible unitil I had a dedicated Vid card. Also, I bought a CHEA
card with only 256K memory and no thrills.

Just thought I would pass this on, especially when all the other forum
thought my idea about the motherboard on line video was incorrect.
It may be possible that you have a faulty vid card as someon
mentioned. I suggest you borrow one and see if the problem subside
before you try ClearType.

Ric

 

[Leythos]

When I open Word, Excel, Internet Explorer or even the Start menu and all the
things within it, the letters/words look fuzzy. Even as I am writing in
this, the letters appear unrefined and hazy. They are not crisp and clear. It
seems as though the letters/words have a fuzz around them. It is very
noticable, especially on white backgrounds. Pictures are clear. Eg. If I go
to www.yahoo.com, the pictures and images are crisp and sharp but the words
and letters are fuzzy. How can one fix this issue? Regards, J.

If you have a LCD monitor you need to change the RESOLUTION to one that
looks better - most LCD monitors look less than sharp at anything other
than their highest resolution.

If it's a CRT, then you may have to change the refresh rate or if your
monitor has a setting for it, you can adjust the focus.

The reason pictures look clear is that they don't have the details that
a font would.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Jeff Wrote:

I had a new 19"LCD Toshiba installed on an IBM Intel motherboard with
on board graphics. I could not get the print to look good and tried the
ClearType. I then bought a new board and the text turned out PERFECT.
I then put the monitor on two other computers and the problem followed
where there wasn't a dedicated video card.

Just thought I would pass this on, especially when all the other forums
thought my idea about the motherboard on line video was incorrect.
It may be possible that you have a faulty vid card as someone
mentioned. I suggest you borrow one and see if the problem subsides
before you try ClearType.

Heh - this brings back memories, and if your problem was the same as
mine, the news may not be so good.

I had a client with an Intel 845G chipset motherboard, that had fuzzy
text and shimmering screen display. The fuzziness was typically not
the same all over the screen, e.g. worse at the lower half, smoothly
improving on the way up. The fuzziness was quite "hard", almost
looking like a pixellated mesh pattern.

The shimmer started later, and wasn't the whole-tube flicker of 60Hz
refresh or interaction with strip lighting. Then the same problem
started on other similar PCs in that site.

I added a cheap-ish (GeForce 4 MX4000) SVGA card, and the problem went
away. So I bought more of those cards and returned to fix the rest of
the PCs... and then I noticed they all had bulging motherboard
capacitors, as I described in this article:

http://cquirke.mvps.org/badcaps.htm

Replacing the caps fixed the graphics problems, leaving me with a
small stash of surplus SVGA cards :-/

Suspect this if your PC tends to lock up hard at odd times, needing a
reset button to get out, or if it doesn't power up when switched on
unless you try a few times, or press reset button to get it going. The
problem is progressive; total failure to power up is the end point.

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