Pixelated/Grainy/Rough Images

[Naominess]

Hi Guys. I think this is a Windows Vista issue...

I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 1545 from Carphone Warehouse, it's a 1.00 GB RAM installed with Windows vista (Which I've been told by someone at Dell isn't enough for vista!) and it's a 15" monitor. The problem I'm having is that the images seem to be choppy/grainy/pixelated, if that makes any sort of sense. The images are quite poor quality. I'll try to explain it as best I can.

A prime example of this is Habbo Hotel, rather than the outlines of the images being seen as smooth, they seem rough and very pixelated and I can see each and every pixel that makes up the image border.

Basically, mostly on Pixelated images and gradients, but also on certain text, the image can appear to have rough/pixelated edges, rather than smooth. So for instance if I have a diagonal line in pixels, rather than it appearing to be smooth I'll be able to see every dot making up the image. I've tried to draw an example below:

This is what I'm be able to see except in a fully zoomed out version. I've tried changing the Resolution to 1280 x 768 from 1366 x 768; (My native resolution) but this just makes everything a blur and makes the screen seem stretched, all though it fixes the pixel problem.

I did have this problem on my other Laptop, but I just changed the resolution and installed 1 driver and it worked fine after that. It was an Acer 5720z. On here as I said when I change the resolution it makes it very blurry/stretched, and no drivers seem to be fixing it. Am I the only person having this problem? And is there a fix?

I hope I've explained this right. It's quite frustrating as I do work with Pixels alot day to day.

Thankyou to anyone who helps! :)

[HawkMan]

all graphics or flash graphics only ?

[Naominess]

all graphics or flash graphics only ?

The issue seems to mainly be with Pixelated images and text. All though some other graphics around the computer are the same. (Taskbar icons, some text, the text in the left side of "Latest forum activity" above seems to be quite rough too.) It's the pixelated images I'm more concerned about though, because that's really what I work with :)

[HawkMan]

turn on font smoothing (cleartype). and right click flash graphics and select high quality.

that and/or make sure you have the proper graphics driver installed

[Naominess]

turn on font smoothing (cleartype). and right click flash graphics and select high quality.

that and/or make sure you have the proper graphics driver installed

Sorry, I have a feeling I'm going to sound very silly :p How do I do that?

[Aldur82]

OK, I'm assuming this is a laptop after a quick google search of "Dell Inspiron 1545".

You might want to check if Cleartype is enabled, as you're using an LCD screen and it sorts out a lot of these sorts of problems.

Right click on the desktop, and choose "Personalize". In the screen that pops up after that, choose "Window Color and Appearance" (should be the top link).

Window after that, choose "Open classic appearance properties for more color options" (should be like an internet link after all the colour options).

Window after that choose the "Effects" button (on the right hand side), and then make sure the "Use the following methods to smooth edges of screen fonts" and the drop down box is set to "Cleartype".

Then OK and apply your way out and see if it makes a difference.

[Naominess]

I've done Cleartype now :) It was already set to that, but I noticed that in another menu it was "Windows Vista Standard", I changed that to "Windows Vista Basic" (to match my laptop) and it seemed to fix the text issue from what I can see.

[Aldur82]

The Cleartype check was just to make sure it was set up correctly (Standard quality on LCD screens can give you real grief).

Sounds like the visual theme was set to one that took up too much memory to render so your graphics card just scaled everything down so it would work.

[Naominess]

The Cleartype check was just to make sure it was set up correctly (Standard quality on LCD screens can give you real grief).

Sounds like the visual theme was set to one that took up too much memory to render so your graphics card just scaled everything down so it would work.

How do I change the Flash quality? And are there any other solutions? (The pixels are still the same)

[Aldur82]

The flash quality can be done by loading a page with flash on, then right click on the flash window and there should be a 'Quality' submenu. It does depend on the writers of that particular flash applet though, as I believe they can disable some of the submenus with options included when it's made. Most don't do this though.

[Naominess]

The flash quality can be done by loading a page with flash on, then right click on the flash window and there should be a 'Quality' submenu. It does depend on the writers of that particular flash applet though, as I believe they can disable some of the submenus with options included when it's made. Most don't do this though.

The website I need it for doesn't seem to have that option :-( Are there any other solutions for rough pixels/pixelated images/grainy images that you know of? Thanks for all of your help so far, by the way. :-)

[Aldur82]

It might be a problem with the DPI setting. After you right click on the desktop and bring up the "Personalize" screen, on the left there should be an option to "Adjust font size (DPI)" and it will require you accepting the UAC prompt that comes up. On the screen that comes up after that it should be set to 96 DPI, but it might be set to 120 DPI. If it's on 120, set it to 96 and let us know how it turns out.

[Naominess]

It might be a problem with the DPI setting. After you right click on the desktop and bring up the "Personalize" screen, on the left there should be an option to "Adjust font size (DPI)" and it will require you accepting the UAC prompt that comes up. On the screen that comes up after that it should be set to 96 DPI, but it might be set to 120 DPI. If it's on 120, set it to 96 and let us know how it turns out.

It's already on 96 DPI. :-(

[Aldur82]

I just had a quick check of your screen values, and if you wanted to down-size the resolution you would need to change it to 1280 x 720 to keep the ratio and stop everything getting stretched and weird looking.

Give that a try and let us know how it goes.

[Naominess]

I just had a quick check of your screen values, and if you wanted to down-size the resolution you would need to change it to 1280 x 720 to keep the ratio and stop everything getting stretched and weird looking.

Give that a try and let us know how it goes.

Just set it to 1280 x 720, and it's definitely got rid of the heavily Pixelated images, but now its to be super blurry. And I'm not sure if this is just me adjusting but everything looks huge also lol.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

It's best to stick to your native resolution, enable ClearType font rendering, and use a default DPI setting of 96.

As for Flash, here's what you can do:

1. Head on over to this site: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/
   
2. Right-click the area under "Adobe Flash Player" and set the Quality to High.
   
3. Right-click the area again and select Settings.
   
4. Click on the tab furthest to the left and make sure "Enable hardware acceleration" is checked off (like so).
   

[Aldur82]

Changing the resolution was just a way to check if it was a hardware fault. Looks like it's definately a software problem.

On the screen where you changed the resolution, what options did you get for the colour depth? (should be just to the right of the slider for the resolution and have values like 32-bit, 24-bit, and 16-bit although might not have the 24-bit). Also, change your resolution back up to 1366 x 768 before checking.

[Naominess]

Changing the resolution was just a way to check if it was a hardware fault. Looks like it's definately a software problem.

On the screen where you changed the resolution, what options did you get for the colour depth? (should be just to the right of the slider for the resolution and have values like 32-bit, 24-bit, and 16-bit although might not have the 24-bit). Also, change your resolution back up to 1366 x 768 before checking.

Hey sorry guys, I was having some internet troubles.

I checked the flash thing, and upgraded my flash player to Flash 10, and tried to alter those settings that you said. But the quality was already set to high and the hardware acceleration was already enabled. Also, the colour depth options were: Medium (16 bit) or Highest (32 bit) :-)

[Aldur82]

What was the colour depth set to? I have a feeling it will probably be set to 32-bit.

[Naominess]

What was the colour depth set to? I have a feeling it will probably be set to 32-bit.

Yeah, it's 32-bit at the moment.

[Aldur82]

The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is to update the graphics drivers directly from the manufacturers website and not from Dell (as they usually provide much older versions).

[Naominess]

The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is to update the graphics drivers directly from the manufacturers website and not from Dell (as they usually provide much older versions).

Who would the manufacturer be?

[Aldur82]

If you right click on the desktop and choose "Personalize" and then "Display settings".

Then click on "Advanced". On the new window there should be some standard tab names (Adaptor, Monitor, Troubleshoot, Color management), and one more with the name of your graphics card manufacturer on (ATI, nVidia, Intel). Let us know what it says, if anything.

[Sethos]

Her laptop has Intel Integrated

[Aldur82]

Her laptop has Intel Integrated

Possibly has integrated. There is an option on the dell website to upgrade the graphics card to ATI. Don't make assumptions when troubleshooting.