That’s pretty much the issue. I am running a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop that is several years old. It has been running Vista for its whole life. Recently, I upgraded to Windows 8. The upgrade and installation went without incident and it even kept my data intact. I generally like Windows 8, though it is very different than any previous iteration of Windows. I have reinstalled my software without difficulty.
Only one thing bugs me. The screen looks different. It’s hard to describe, but basically, everything appears less crisp. I have checked the display settings and they are set at the highest resolution, etc. In fact, there are only two choices for resolution (in Vista, I had several). One app (to use the Windows 8 parlance) I have is Bejeweled Twist. The game plays fine, but the animations are not smooth at all. Before the upgrade, the game played flawlessly.
I have attempted to address these issues by going to the Dell website and making sure I have all of the latest drivers for the various components, especially the video card. I have confirmed that I have the latest software available from Dell.
Has anyone else experienced similar issues? Does anyone have a suggestion on how to improve my display quality?
One thing I’ve noticed about Windows 8 is that it always seems to install a video driver from Microsoft rather than use the one you have, even if that one is perfectly compatible with Windows 8. The crispness may* have been the sharpness setting of your video card, and the lack of smoothness is exactly what I experienced when I upgraded my old computer until I went to Nvidia and installed the driver for my card.
Go to your graphics card manufacturer’s website and look for the latest driver they have. Get the one for Windows 8 if it’s there. Otherwise, prefer getting one for Windows 7 over the one for Vista.
If you don’t know exactly what your graphics card is, do the following: Move your mouse the the bottom left corner of the screen to get the Start tile, right click on it, and select Device Manager. Double click on Display Adapters to show which one is installed. As long as it doesn’t say something like “Generic VGA driver”, then that’s your graphics card. If it does mention a generic card, post back here and we’ll help you figure out which card you have. A generic driver would be 100% sure to be your problem if that’s what’s installed.
*If it’s just text that’s blurry, that could definitely be a ClearType issue, as yoyoDyne mentions.
Does your resolution match the screen’s native resolution? Using anything other than the native resolution, including one higher than native, will probably make it look blurry. This site says it’s 1280 by 800, but this site says 1680x1050 was an option.
I feel dumb for not thinking of that. Windows 8 also seems to discard your monitor driver in lieu of its own, which means it won’t necessarily only show display settings you can use. So the highest resolution may actually be higher than the native resolution.
Still, in my experience, a too high resolution usually results in having the screen scroll rather than get blurry. But that may be a feature of the graphics driver, which, as I said, may be messed up.
Thank you three for your help. Following BigT’s suggestion, I determined that Windows substituted its own generic display driver. Using yoyodyne’s link, I found the ATI driver for my video card. I attempted the using the Mobility Modder suggested, but it would not run properly. However, in spite of my OEM being Dell, I was able to install ATI’s (AMD’s) Catalyst driver with no difficulty. A quick restart later and my display is all cleared up. I also ran the ClearType wizard. I’ve never seen or heard of that one before. Thanks for the tip.
I still only have two choices for screen resolution. I am running at 1152x864 with a refresh of 64Hz. Seems kind of weird, but there it is.
I disabled 3D acceleration in Bejeweled Twist and that cleared up its issues as well. So, once again, I am happy with my little old laptop. When I was running Vista, my computer would boot in about four to six minutes. Now, with Windows 8, I can have the computer booted and software running in less than ONE minute. I am ecstatic!
Windows is a cute little OS now. I flushed out my computer after the first time, because something on my Sony Vaio wasn’t playing nice, and I had a registry error crash. But now it’s been working wonderfully. There’s always that option to try, if you back up everything first!
At the risk of asking a stupid question, or maybe this is a whoosh, but is your monitor, in fact, a touch screen? The touch features of Win8 won’t work if your monitor is not a touch screen.
