images in exploer are terrible.

[soulm4tter]

the image problem i have is only in explorer. i'm running WinXP Pro SP1 with IE 6 on a Dell Inspirion 5150. its my brothers laptop and i don't know if its always had this problem or not.

The laptop is only a few months old and he installed NetZero highspeed dial-up crap shortly after getting it. I thought netzero may have been causing it since it compresses or drums down images, but even when set to "display images with full quality, images still looked crappy.

We now have DSL and i've uninstalled NetZero. I've also reset Explorer settings to defaults, but the problem still exists. If you have any idea how to fix this problem i would be grateful.

 

[MrChad]

What color depth is your brother's laptop's display set at? Right-click the desktop, go to Properties and click the Advanced tab.

 

[soulm4tter]

The color depth is set to 32-bit. i just changed it to 16-bit which is the only other option and it doesn't look any better.

 

[MrChad]

Do you have the same image quality problems in other browsers such as Firefox?

 

[soulm4tter]

everything looks fine in firefox, but i did notice that it displays pages much smaller than IE6. firefox leaves a lot of blank space in the browser window. it barely uses more than half the width of the full screen. i'm using bbc news home page to compare, which is probably designed for 640x480. My resolution is set to 1400x1050, which is default for this display. even the tabs at anadtech are hard to read in IE6, but perfect in firefox. IE6 blows anandtech out to full page while firefox crops the sides.

 

[MrChad]

If you right-click a page in Internet Explorer, do you see any options for "Show Original Image"?

 

[kapow]

Try Display Properties > Settings > Advanced > DPI Setting... Is is set to Large size or Normal size? If it's set to Large change it to Normal...You may need to reboot for change to take effect.

 

[soulm4tter]

no, that command is not there.

 

[MrChad]

We should rule out spyware since this seems to be an IE-specific issue. Follow the steps on this page and let us know what you find.