Windows scaling issues with nvidia control panel: To prevent your flat-panel display from scaling

Windows scaling issues for high-DPI devices

Summary

When you use a high-DPI device such as a Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, or Surface Book together with external monitors, you experience the following issues:

• Elements such as applications, the taskbar, icons, toolbars, text, and dialog boxes appear to be fuzzy.

• Elements are too large or too small compared to the rest of the desktop.

• Blurry text appears in applications or in the Windows interface.

Although these symptoms may be seen on a single monitor, they’re more common when you use multiple monitors that vary in display resolution. These symptoms also occur when the hardware configuration changes, such as when you dock and undock a device that uses external monitors, or you detach an external monitor from the device.

These issues commonly occur in the following scenarios:

• Applications are moved between monitors that use different display resolutions.

• The monitor that applications are displayed on changes between docked and undocked configurations.

• Users mix connections during the same logon session. For example, users log on through a remote desktop connection (RDC), and later connect directly without first logging off.

Display information is determined when a user logs on to the system. A logoff-logon process resets the display information and improves behavior. However, the issue recurs if the monitor configuration changes during the same logon session, such as when you dock or undock the device or detach an external monitor.

This issue has become more prevalent since the introduction of 4k and higher resolution monitors, especially when these monitors are mixed together with older, standard monitors.

For more information about how Windows scales applications, see the following Core Team Blog articles:

Display Scaling in Windows 10

Display Scaling changes for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

Improving your scaling experience

Improved high-DPI support for desktop apps

Resolution

To resolve this issue, use the following methods.

• Check for software updates
  Improvements are continuously being added to Windows 10 and Office 2016 applications. If you are experiencing a specific issue, first check whether it has been resolved in the latest Windows release or cumulative update. To check Windows 10 updates, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

  
  Windows 10 Update History

• Match screen resolutions
  Consider deploying monitors that have complementary screen resolutions.

  When you use multiple monitors (including when you dock or connect to remote screens), a greater difference in the resolution between the native device and external device is more likely to cause the issues to occur. For more information, see the following OneDrive presentation:

  
  Surface Pro 3 and Multi-Monitor Guidance

• Use UWP applications
  Use or deploy Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications instead of Win32 applications.

  Modern (UWP) apps always scale correctly. If there is a comparable modern app available, you can substitute that app to mitigate the scaling issues. For example, Edge is a modern app that does not cause the DPI Scaling issues that Internet Explorer might experience. Similarly, Remote Desktop is an alternative to mstsc.exe.

• Check for known issues
  See the following articles for more information about known issues in these specific products.

  Office 2016

  
  Office apps appear the wrong size or blurry on external monitors

  Note Office 2016 applications started being released starting in September 2016. Additional updates are scheduled to follow.
  
   
  Internet Explorer

  
  3165808 Internet Explorer 11 Window display changes between built-in device monitor and an external monitor

Workaround

To work around scaling issues, try the following methods:

• Log out and in
  Log out and log back in to the system. This improves how applications and elements are displayed when the monitor configuration changes.

• Change application properties
  In Explorer or on the Start menu, right-click the application name, select Properties, select the Compatibility tab, and then select the Disable display scaling on high DPI settings check box.

  Note: In Windows 10 Version 1703 and later version of Windows, the text of the Disable display scaling on high DPI settings option is changed to Override high DPI scaling behavior, scaling performed by: Application.

• Check whether applications are DPI-aware
  To determine an application’s support of DPI Scaling, follow these steps:

  1. Download and run Sysinternals Process Explorer.

  2. In Process Explorer, click the columns, and then add the DPI Awareness column to the view.

  3. Start the application that you want to check.

  4. Report an issue
     Many UI elements have been updated because of customer feedback. Because DPI Scaling issues can involve multiple symptoms and configuration, information from users can help us identify specific scenarios and prioritize the development of updates.

     To provide such feedback, follow these steps:

     1. Record monitor configurations. To do this, take a screenshot of Display window (Start > Settings > System > Display).

     2. Record the steps that you must follow to reproduce the issue.

     3. Take screenshots or video of the desktop or applications before and after the scaling issues occur.

     4. Run DXDiag.exe on the system.

     5. Select Start > Feedback Hub. Search on “DPI” to check whether any listed issue matches your specific issue. If you find a match, you can add additional feedback, including screen shots, DXDiag results, and any other relevant information.

More Information

Display scaling is a deceptively complex problem. There is no magic bullet or single fix to resolve all DPI Scaling problems. DPI Scaling benefits from continuous improvements in the core operating system, in application development models, and in applications from both Microsoft and third parties.

Different versions of Windows and application development models have different display scaling capabilities and limitations.

For example, in Windows that were released earlier than Windows 8.1, desktop environment and applications understand only one scale factor, generally based on the primary display at the time that the logon session starts. When the display changes in the middle of a logon session, the system bitmaps scale content from the system scale factor to the new monitor scale factor. This makes sure that content doesn’t become excessively large or small. However, text may appear blurred. (The effect is worse when you scale up.) If the system shrinks or stretches UI elements to the correct size, this may cause some blurriness in dialog boxes and other UI elements.

In Windows 10, investments were made so that large parts of the desktop UX will scale crisply in docking-undocking scenarios. Additional scalability improvements were made to the taskbar, File Explorer, desktop icons, context menu, and other UI elements to improve the user experience.

Microsoft is continuously updating the system and first-party applications. Third-party applications may require similar investments.

References

MSDN: Writing DPI-aware Win32 applications	High DPI
TechNet	High DPI Support for IT Professionals
Thurrott Blog: July 13, 2015 post that discusses DPI Scaling. Article is based on the «Devices» chapter of the Windows 10 Field Guide.	Windows 10 Feature Focus: Display Scaling
Windows Blog: July 15, 2013	Windows 8.1 DPI Scaling Enhancements
Build 2015: Display Scaling: What it is and what you need to know about it to have great visuals	Display Scaling: What It Is and What You Need to Know About it to Have Great Visuals Display scaling: What it is and why it matters to you. pptx
Build 2014: Windows Desktop Development Platform Advancements	Windows Desktop Development Platform Advancements Windows Desktop Development Platform Advancements.pptx
Build 2013: Making your desktop apps shine on high-DPI displays	Making Your Desktop Apps Shine on High- DPI Display

How to Configure Display Scaling on Windows 10 for High-DPI Monitors

It is not a secret that Windows doesn’t look good on high-resolution, high DPI monitors and multi-monitor setups. Microsoft has tried to solve this issue several times with updates, but things are still not as good as they should be.

So, although it has been six years since Windows 10 came to the market, users have to do a lot of manual tuning to make visuals look good on high DPI monitors.

This is where display scaling comes in. Let’s look at how you can scale the visuals on Windows to suit your display better.

What Is Display Scaling?

Display scaling refers to adjusting UI elements such as images and text, so they look good on your display. On high DPI monitors, display scaling aims to make the text appear sharper, and images look crisp.

This all sounds good on paper, but Windows leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to display scaling.

Traditionally, programs scale their visuals according to the pixels present. For instance, on a 1080p monitor, the software scales to map its visuals to roughly two million pixels. On a 4K monitor, the same visuals would have to adjust to eight million pixels.

And this is where issues start to pop up.

First, because the textual elements have to map to individual pixels, they tend to look much smaller on high DPI displays. So, readability takes a hit.

Second, visuals don’t scale well if you run multiple monitors, especially if the monitors are of different sizes and resolutions.

Related: How to Use Your Laptop Like an External Monitor

To alleviate the issue associated with per-pixel scaling, Microsoft has introduced Bitmap scaling. Bitmap scaling works just like a digital zoom. Essentially, Windows takes the visuals and spreads them out on the display. You can imagine how this might result in a loss of clarity and detail.

Thankfully, if you are having display scaling issues, you can tweak things manually to your liking.

To adjust display scaling on a single monitor, press Windows Key + I to open the Settings panel, type display in the search bar, and select the first result. This will open up the Display Settings panel.

Now, under Display resolution, make sure the native resolution of your display is selected. For instance, if you are running a 1080p monitor, choose 1920 x 1080 from the dropdown list.

Next, look under Scale and layout and see what scaling factor Windows has applied by default. For a 1080p monitor, the scaling factor is set to 100%. For a 4K monitor, the factor is often set to 150%. If you are not happy with the default factor, change it to your liking.

If you want to enlarge the visuals, increase the factor. Conversely, if you want to make UI elements smaller, decrease it.

After changing the factor, be sure to Log off and Log on each time. Some parts of Windows don’t reflect the changes made to scaling until you have logged off and logged on again.

If none of the scaling options work well enough for you, click on Advanced scaling settings.

In the Advanced settings panel, select Let Windows try to fix apps so they are not blurry. As the name suggests, this setting enables automatic display scaling. This may not work well for all apps, especially if you operate multiple monitors.

Finally, if nothing works, you can try entering a custom scaling size in the field under Custom scaling. Remember, always try small increments first, as you can set a huge scaling size, making it difficult for you to locate the setting later.

Display Scaling Options for Discreet GPUs

Besides the built-in scaling settings in Windows, you can also tweak things further if you have a discreet AMD or Nvidia GPU. As these settings are geared more towards gamers, they are unlikely to resolve any significant scaling issues.

Display Scaling for AMD GPUs

If you are using an AMD GPU, right-click anywhere on the desktop and select AMD Radeon Software. Navigate to the Display tab. Under Display Options, make sure GPU Scaling is disabled, and Scaling Mode is set to Preserve aspect ratio.

GPU Scaling is used to upscale retro games to the native display resolution. Enabling it does little to no good for regular day-to-day use but introduces input lag. So, only enable it if you are going to be playing retro games.

Scaling Mode, on the other hand, handles how an image is displayed on the screen. Preserve aspect ratio preserves the aspect ratio of the image and doesn’t stretch the image to fit the display. This will introduce black bars around the image.

Center turns off image scaling of all kinds and just centers the image. Once again, black bars will appear around the image if the resolution doesn’t match your display.

Finally, Full Panel scaling mode stretches the image to fill the display.

Display Resolution for Nvidia GPUs

The procedure for Nvidia GPUs is almost the same as AMD GPUs. Right-click anywhere on the desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel.

Once you are in, navigate to Adjust desktop size and position located on the left-hand side under Display.

Next, select the scaling mode you want. Go with Aspect Ratio if you are not sure what to select as this is the default.

Display Scaling for a Multiple Monitor Setup

If you have multiple monitors of different sizes and resolutions, you are going to have to adjust each monitor individually. Otherwise, you can end up with proper scaling on one display and a jumbled mess on the other.

Related: How to Use a Chromecast as a Second Computer Monitor

So, press Windows Key + I to open the Settings panel, type display in the search bar, and select the first result. Once you are in the Settings panel, select which monitor you want to configure at the top of the page. The rest of the steps are the same as mentioned above.

Don’t forget to log off and log on after changing the settings.

After configuring the monitor, drag a window over to that monitor and see if everything looks good.

Do the same for all monitors.

Display Scaling for Individual Programs

Even after you’ve tweaked every possible setting related to display scaling, some programs can still scale poorly. For instance, on 4K monitors, it is common for programs to have tiny, fuzzy text. To resolve this issue, you can leave scaling to the program itself.

Go to the folder where the program is installed, then right-click on the program’s icon and select Properties.

Next, click on Compatibility and then click on Change high DPI settings.

In the dialogue box that pops up, select Override high DPI scaling behavior and choose Application from the dropdown list. The Application setting allows the program to bypass system-wide scaling and define its own scaling parameters for high DPI monitors.

The Easy Way to Improve Display Scaling in Windows 10

Although the scaling settings don’t fix every problem that creeps up on high DPI monitors, you can fix a lot of the issues by going with the default settings. Windows has come a long way since its release. And things will get better as more and more people adopt high DPI monitors and multi-monitor setups.

How to adjust display scaling in Windows 10 for high resolution monitors • Okie Doki

It’s no secret that Windows looks bad on high resolution monitors, high resolution and multi-monitor setups. Microsoft has tried several times to fix this issue with updates, but still not as good as it should be.

So even though it’s been six years since Windows 10 hit the market, users have to do a lot of manual tweaking to make visuals look good on high resolution monitors.

This is where display scaling comes in handy. Let’s take a look at how you can scale visuals in Windows to better fit your display.

What is display scaling?

Display scaling refers to adjusting user interface elements such as images and text so that they look good on your display. On high-resolution monitors, display scaling aims to make text appear sharper and images appear clearer.

Windows apps, mobile apps, games — EVERYTHING FOR FREE, in our private telegram channel — Subscribe 🙂

All this sounds good on paper, but Windows leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to display scaling.

Traditionally, programs scale their visual effects according to the pixels present. For example, on a 1080p monitor, the software scales to display visuals to around two million pixels. On a 4K monitor, the same visuals need to be brought to eight million pixels.

And this is where the problems start to appear.

First, because text elements must fit on individual pixels, they tend to look much smaller on high resolution displays. So, readability is a hit.

Second, the visuals don’t scale well if you’re running multiple monitors, especially if the monitors have different sizes and resolutions.

Related: How to use your laptop as an external monitor

To solve the problem with pixel-by-pixel scaling, Microsoft introduced Bitmap scaling. Bitmap scaling works the same as digital scaling. Essentially, Windows takes visual effects and distributes them across the display. You can imagine how this can lead to a loss of clarity and detail.

Fortunately, if you’re having trouble scaling your display, you can manually adjust the settings to your liking.

Display scaling on a single monitor

To adjust the display scaling on a single monitor, press the Windows key + I to open the settings panel, type display in the search bar, and select the first result. This will open the display settings panel.

Now under Screen Resolution, make sure your display’s native resolution is selected. For example, if you are using a 1080p monitor, select 1920 x 1080 from the dropdown list.

Then look in the Scale and Layout section and see what scaling factor Windows uses by default. For a 1080p monitor, the zoom ratio is set to 100%. For a 4K monitor, the ratio is often set to 150%. If you’re not happy with the default ratio, change it to your liking.

If you want to increase visual effects, increase the ratio. Conversely, if you want to make UI elements smaller, make them smaller.

After changing the coefficient, it is mandatory to log out and log in every time. Some parts of Windows do not reflect changes made to scaling until you log out and log back in.

If none of the scaling options work well enough for you, click More Scaling Options.

In the advanced settings panel, select «Let Windows try to fix apps so they’re not blurry.» As the name suggests, this option enables automatic display scaling. This may not work for all applications, especially if you are using multiple monitors.

Finally, if nothing else works, you can try entering a custom scaling size in the field under Custom scaling. Remember, always try small increments first, as you can set the zoom size to large, making it difficult for you to find the adjustment later.

Display scaling options for discrete GPUs

In addition to the built-in scaling settings in Windows, you can also configure advanced options if you have a discreet AMD or Nvidia GPU. Since these settings are geared more towards gamers, they are unlikely to solve any major scaling issues.

Display scaling for AMD GPUs

If you are using an AMD GPU, right-click anywhere on the desktop and select AMD Radeon Software. Go to the Display tab. Under Display Options, make sure GPU scaling is disabled and Scaling Mode is set to Maintain Aspect Ratio.

GPU scaling is used to scale retro games to native screen resolution. Enabling this setting has little to no benefit for day to day use, but does result in input lag. So only turn it on if you’re going to play retro games.

On the other hand, the scaling mode determines how the image is displayed on the screen. Keep Aspect Ratio preserves the aspect ratio of the image and does not stretch the image to fit the screen. This will result in black bars appearing around the image.

Center disables all image scaling and simply centers the image. Once again, black bars will appear around the image if the resolution doesn’t match your display.

Finally, the Full Panel scaling mode stretches the image to fill the screen.

Display resolution for Nvidia GPUs

The procedure for Nvidia GPUs is almost the same as for AMD GPUs. Right-click anywhere on the desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel.

Once you’re signed in, go to the «Adjust desktop size and position» section located on the left side of the «Display» section.

Then select the desired zoom mode. Choose an aspect ratio if you’re not sure what to choose, since that’s the default.

Display scaling for multi-monitor setup

If you have multiple monitors of different sizes and resolutions, you will need to configure each monitor individually. Otherwise, you may end up with correct scaling on one display and a mess on another.

Related: How to use Chromecast as a second computer monitor

So, press Windows Key + I to open the settings panel, type display in the search bar and select the first result. From the Settings panel, select which monitor you want to set up at the top of the page. The rest of the steps are the same as above.

Be sure to log out and log in after changing the settings.

After setting up a monitor, drag a window onto that monitor and see if everything is ok.

Do the same for all monitors.

Display scaling for individual programs

Even after you have configured all possible settings related to display scaling, some programs may still not scale well. For example, on 4K monitors, programs usually have tiny fuzzy text. To solve this problem, you can leave the scaling to the program itself.

Navigate to the folder where the program is installed, then right-click on the program icon and select Properties.

Then click Compatibility and then click Change High Resolution Settings.

In the pop-up dialog, select «Override High DPI Scaling Behavior» and select «Application» from the drop-down list. The Application setting allows the program to bypass system-wide scaling and define its own scaling options for high resolution monitors.

An easy way to improve display scaling in Windows 10

Although scaling settings don’t fix all problems that occur on high resolution monitors, you can fix many issues by choosing the default settings. Windows has come a long way since its release. And things will get better as more and more people use high resolution monitors and multiple monitors.

NVIDIA Control Panel won’t open — how to fix it

One of the common problems on computers and laptops with GeForce graphics cards is the situation when the NVIDIA Control Panel won’t open. This can happen in different ways: no reaction at all to an attempt to open, it opens and immediately closes, writes “NVIDIA display settings are not available. The display being used is not connected to an NVIDIA GPU.»

This guide details what to do if you can’t launch the NVIDIA Control Panel in Windows 11 and Windows 10 in various situations, possible causes of the problem, and how to fix the situation. Related: Access Denied in NVIDIA Control Panel, What to do if there is no Display tab in NVIDIA Control Panel.

Problems opening the NVIDIA Control Panel can be caused by various reasons, but in most cases the fix is ​​relatively simple. First, the quickest and most frequently working solutions to the problem:

1. Check if the NVIDIA Control Panel starts immediately after rebooting Windows 11 or Windows 10 (we use the “Restart” item, not shutdown and then turn it on). If everything works fine in this case, try disabling fast startup.
2. Look in the task manager (right click on the «Start» button — «Task Manager»). If the process nvcplui.exe hangs in the Task Manager on the «Details» tab, select it and click «End Task», then try starting the NVIDIA Control Panel again.
3. Press the Win+R keys on your keyboard (Win is the Windows logo key), type services.msc and press Enter. In the list of services that opens, pay attention to the services whose names begin with «NVIDIA». Make sure these services are not disabled. Otherwise, double-click on the service, set the «Startup type» to «Automatic», apply the settings and click the «Start» button.
4. If the services are already running, try restarting them, especially — NVIDIA Display Container LS (but better — all available): right click on the service name — restart. This method (restarting the service) often helps if the NVIDIA Control Panel stops opening when you log in as a different user.
5. Try manually downloading from the NVIDIA website and installing the drivers for your video card, while in the «Installation Options» window, select «Custom installation», and in the next window, check the «Perform a clean installation» option.
6. If your PC, and especially your laptop, also has integrated video, for example, Intel HD, download and install the drivers for it too: there should not be any «Basic Microsoft video adapters» in the device manager.

As a rule, one of these methods works, but not in all cases: it happens that with updated drivers and despite the fact that all NVIDIA services are working properly, the NVIDIA Control Panel still immediately closes or does not open at all.

Additional Methods

In case the launch problems persist, consider the following points and try some modifications to the previously described methods:

• NVIDIA Control Panel may not start when using multiple monitors, especially third party software. If you also have multiple monitors, check if it will start up if you turn off the computer, turn off all monitors except one, then turn on the computer again.
• Drivers for USB monitors (for example, for the tablet to act as a second monitor), tools like DisplayLink (if available, can be found in Programs and Features) can also lead to a problem.
• Some reviews report that uninstalling third-party antiviruses helped with this issue, noting that AVG and Avast were the cause.
• If the problem occurs on a laptop, you can try this option: download the drivers for the integrated and discrete video card from the website of the laptop manufacturer (even if they are far from new and are intended for the previous version of the system), download DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller), disconnect from Internet (so that Windows does not have time to install the drivers itself), remove the existing drivers using DDU, install the drivers previously downloaded from the official site.