Win XP via iMac (parallels) resolution settings

Factual Questions
1

So I’m running XP on my new 20 inch iMac. The fonts/screen fits nicely on the 20 in monitor, but it’s a bit blurry/off compared to what I’m used to seeing. “Right clicking” (via shift+control+click) on the desktop I see the resolution is set at 1344 by 840.

Switching to 1600 by 1200 of course makes things alot smaller, but ALOT more clear, and the way I want them. The problem is that both the bottom and top of the desktop “leak” off the top/bottom of the screen. I can’t see either the START in the lower/left corner nor the ‘top’ of the screens in XP.

So damn if I can’t figure out how to change the monitor settings in XP via Parallels in iMac to ‘shrink’ it into place. I’m used to doing this with the buttons on the front of my dell monitor. I love the mac already, but eh, this is kinda gettin under my skin.

Anybody run across this? Help? I hate being frustrated by seemingly simple things.

:smiley:

2

With the virtual machine off, check out the custom resolutions setting in the machine configuration. They’ll be available in your Windows Display control panel. There’s also the setting to fit your VM screen to full screen or not. As long as you don’t scale the screen and keep the custom resolutions below the iMac’s screen settings, it’ll fit and be 100% native resolution.

That latter statement may be the problem – are you saying that everything in Windows is at too high a resolution for you? If that’s the case, then maybe all you really want to do is change is your Windows Display control panel settings. Go to the Settings tab, hit the Advanced button, and look at the General tab for the DPI settings. I usually set a custom setting so that I compare the on-screen ruler with a real ruler, and usually get 110% or so scaling. Well-behaved Windows apps will honor your settings.