Problem with jagged fonts and graphics on internet explorer

phys16,

Thanks for using the Dell Community Forum.

I'm really sorry about the length of time it's taken to respond.  The recent virus attacks have put everybody in a bind.

Who is your ISP?  Also, just to make sure, try posting this in the Portables board and see if anybody there has information.

 

Michael,

I tried this with 2 different ISP's and it didn't make a difference.  You can read the other post I just posted as well, as I  explained a little more to Evan.

Thanks

Dave

Dave,

Thanks for the insight. My sense is that it is a problem with IE itself, and not your version or install. I think this is especially likely from my problem--there are clearly some troubled or incomplete features with IE 6. Perhaps Service Pack 1 is not up to par.

As for the graphics driver, I downloaded from ATI the newest driver version and reinstalled, but to no avail. Don't waste your time trying the same thing.

In the meantime, I've gone to Mozilla--at least that allows me to use the nice hi-res display I paid extra $$ for!

Evan

Dave,

I posted a message a few minutes ago relating to the same problem (although I didn't specify that pictures/text was not clear in IE).  I am trying to have IE use my Windows display settings in an attempt to solve this, but have run into another set of problems:  the box that IE says to check to allow this feature is missing from where it should be (Internet Options, Advanced Tab).

Do you have an SXGA+ display?

Evan

Evan,

Yeah, I have the SXGA display.  I tried changing all of the settings as well, but it didn't work.  I have talked to a bunch of people at dell from software support to hardware support, one guy said it was a video driver, the other guy said to reinstall and reformat my computer(which would be a huge drag).  I know the software from the original windows disk that came with the computer has a good version of ie 6 because I loaded it on another computer and it worked fine.  It also doesn't make a difference who my ISP is with, because I tried this with 2 different ISP's.  My cousin worked for Microsoft, so we were going to run a few tests tonight, I'll let you know what I find out.

Dave

Dave,

I just bought a new Inspiron 5100 with the SVGA+ screen and I have the same problem.  I've been working with tech support for 2 days, but mostly they are clueless.  Did you ever find a fix to your problem?

pediman

Pediman,

After spending more than 2 days, and talking to my cousing who worked for microsoft, I learned that the only way to fix it is to completely reformat your hard drive(yes, it wasn't my first choice) and then reload whatever windows program that came with your system.  I did this and now it works fine.

Dave

Has anyone found a way to fix this quite serious problem. My stock Inspiron 600m shows horribly pixelated images. This is most certainly not a problem with the web site or ISP as I can look at the same site on my Mac and Dell desktop and there's no problem. Can someone point me to th solution, I cannot find it here.

And to answer the inevitable questions: yes smart image dithering and show pictures are checked (though I tried on and off to no effect).

I'm hoping Dell has fixed this problem by now, its been a year from the looks of this forum.

Thanks!

OK, finally found the fix. A big no thanks to tech support who seem blissfully unaware of the problem 13 months after it was first reported. Oddly, the main Inspiron Video FAQ links to the solution (merely saying "click here here and here") but fails to mention the registry edit as the primary solution.

It is also unbelievable that Dell would ship this expensive computer with this bug and then expect normal users to do regedits! Did no one at Dell open up IE6 and look at the web before the machine was put into production? Sorry for the slight rant, it's just bad customer service... regardless of whether this is an IE problem, Dell shipped a machine that requires the user to edit the registry before a critical app is functions normally. Freaky.

Thanks to those who posted the regedit solution.

 

Thanks for the info, where did you find the link to the regedit?

Thanks

Dave

hi dave,

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&message.id=79881

To quote one of the posts:

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"Changing this setting in IE 6 did not work for me but as suggested by forum user Clarifix in software forum - I changed registry setting

HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\INTERNET EXPLORER\MAIN\USEHR

The setting for this key is (Hex)  1. 

 After changing this setting to 0 and using DPI = 120 the problem of viewing distorted images in Internet Explorer is gone.

My 8500 now is fabulous. I can make ICONS and fonts any size, as big as I want. My taskbars are great. All my Macromedia design programs look better than before.

This is just fantastic!"

--------------

This fix solved my problem :-)

rich