UI pixelated on thru Dell XPS 8500 / AMD HD7770 card

[steveashe]

Trying to demo on my main rig so I can purchase, the UI is unreadable on my setup.  Looks fine on my Microsoft Surface pro (I tried it to make sure I'm not nuts), but not on my high end XPS 8500 with I7-3770 / AMD HD7770 into my HD TV.  It's not the TV as the UI looks fine through the minidisplay port on the Surface Pro to my HDTV.  Maybe I need to tweak my graphics card settings or ?  I have been trying to do this for hours.. can you help me fix this problem?  The word I'd use is pixelated, I can see the background of the UI but not the buttons, or menus, etc.  Thanks! 

[PeterSt]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for reporting the problem instead of going away. However, it doesn't tell me much without a picture of it. Can you show me a screenshot (or photo) from this please ?
(when posting, under "Additional Options" near the bottom you can put up attachments)

Waiting for it ...
Peter

[steveashe]

absolutely.  Does this attachment help?

[PeterSt]

Hmm ... I sure recognize the kind of display(ing) but I can't reason out why or how it happens.
Maybe this is going to be somewhat complicated :

Possibly the anomaly happened only once (for whatever reason I can't think of) but at quitting XXHighEnd these "settings" are saved and brought back when XXHE is restarted. To avoid this, rename the SettingsReset.tss file in your XX folder to SettingsReset.tst. This simulates a fresh install.

When this does not help, use the [ S ] button you see in the lower left corner. This brings you to the Scaling functionality but it needs a bit of praying to get this function properly on-screen (with your shown anomaly to beging as the base I mean). The Scaling Factor you should see in there is 1.40 (which is the default after Install) and possibly it went out of order. Is it 1.4, then that's not the cause (although you could try to set it to 1.7 or 1.2 etc.).

Looking closer, it merely looks like other data in that same Scaling functionality contains bananas. Fields for background images perhaps (you can easily clear them all without harm).

Also notice the [ 2 ] which is just visible in the left part of your screen. This is a "splitter bar" and can be dragged to right or left. Now, there should also be a [ 1 ] which is the other (of 2) splitter bars and it should be positioned to the left of [ 2 ]. In your situation, try to move the [ 2 ] more to the right and see whether that resets things.
You might compare with your Surface Pro to learn the merits of these splitter bars.

Actually I have no clue;
What's the reported resolution of your TV screen in this situation (just try to change it through Windows (rightclick on the Desktop etc.) without really changing it and you will wee what it's at at the moment).

Also I wonder whether this is Windows 7 or Windows 8 (with a hint to that strange icon at the position of the Start button). When Windows 8, did you install another Explorer Shell ?

Peter

[steveashe]

Hi Peter.  Well, I tried for another few hours.  Not working.  Resolution is at 1920 x 1080 so I changed to various lower resolutions, no change.  Tried various scaling options.  This is Windows 8, I had "stardock" installed to give me back Start menu from Win 7.  Uninstalled stardock to see if that might help, nope.  I played with the split screen, that did help a little bit but not enough to make it useable on a daily basis.  Who knows.   It is definitely some sort of pixelation thing, when I move my mouse over the UI, I can make it look a bit better (the screen fills in some).   I'm up for other idea's but right now seems like a no go on my particular system.  Such is life :-). 

[PeterSt]

I just sent you an email Steve.