Problem with Text in vista...

ok, i'm having a major issue here.

I installed vista without much of a problem. Then i went to Nvidia's website and grabbed their newest Vista drivers for the 32 bit version.

Well, the text is ALL screwed up. Its like....i can see red/green around the black letters slightly. Enough to cause me some major eye strain, and its giving me a massive head-ache.

the best way i can describe is, is if you have a projection style TV. and when your trying to calibrate it, you have the red, blue, and green lines. and you need to adjust the TV so all 3 lines are exactly ontop of each other. if their now, you end up having red or green or both sticking out from the sides. and i'm sure that many of you guys here know what i'm talking about, and have seen it. and how badly it screws with your eyes.

the problem is, its not doing it in just windows. its also doing it in any PC game i have. the text in those games are HORRIBLE. while it IS readable, it is really really bad.

am i missing something? something i didn't do? Some driver(s) that i havn't installed?

Bumping this up to the top again.

Video card is the 6800GS, using a DFI NForce 2 Mobo.

and 2 20" widescreen Samsung 204/205BW Monitors.

I have no idea in hell why the graphics, and text are all screwed up. its like the resolution is at some really weird res, causing certain spots on the monitor to be all fuzzy.

the weird thing is, the text and everything looks WORSE when i install and use the Nvidia graphic drivers. And it actually slightly looks better when using the defult drivers that came with Vista! ( not a whole lot better, but there is a difference ).

so WTF am i doing wrong or missing???

are you using an LCD? It may be a cleartype issue, try disabling it to see if that helps. beyond that I'm not sure, could be a genuine driver issue.

Ive been hearing lots of horror stories about nvidia's drivers and vista. Just an FYI.

The horror stories are real, trying to get there drivers to work right all night = Made me and system restore fast friends.

screwed up resolution, looks fuzzy. wait till you try to get tv out to work, it only gets worse.

Vista defult works fine for me though.

I have this same issue on LCD and vista, and ATI. On my screen if I get close I can see the same text color distortion you are seeing. It's as if I have convergence problems, yet, LCD monitors don't have convergence settings like a CRT would. I didn't have this problem in XP, but I see it just like you do on Vista.

Thanks for the replies guys.

At least now i know i'm not the only one having this problem.

but yeah, I'm using an LCD. I'm trying the 100.xx drivers ( can't remember the exact number ) thats works for the 6 and 7x series Nvidia cards. they did help a LITTLE, but not a whole lot.

and vixro, thats exactly what i'm talking about. like you said it seems like a convergence problem. But i can notice it about 2 feet away from the monitor.

bleh, now i'm not sure if i want to go back to XP...or stick it out with vista, and hope Nvidia releases some fixes here within a week.

Oh, and i already tried turning off Cleartype and turning it back on. it didn't help. Actually, turning cleartype off made it worse.

Try turning off trueType?

Looks like that fixed it for me. I no longer see the problem. The cleartype appeared to be the issue. At first, I didn't think it worked, but after a reboot the problem was fixed. Here is where the menu is located.

right click empty space on desktop
click personalize
click on windows appearence and color
click the link on the bottom referring to classic menues
click on effects
then at the top, uncheck the box that says something about smoothing edges.
do apply and ok, reboot and the problem should be fixed.


sometimes I imagine that I can still see it, but when I focus my eyes it's no longer there.

vixro said:

Looks like that fixed it for me. I no longer see the problem. The cleartype appeared to be the issue. At first, I didn't think it worked, but after a reboot the problem was fixed. Here is where the menu is located.

right click empty space on desktop
click personalize
click on windows appearence and color
click the link on the bottom referring to classic menues
click on effects
then at the top, uncheck the box that says something about smoothing edges.
do apply and ok, reboot and the problem should be fixed.


sometimes I imagine that I can still see it, but when I focus my eyes it's no longer there.

Click to expand...

OMG!!! THANK YOU! it fixed it! then all i had to do was change a few settings on my monitor, and everything is ( almost ) fine. Some of the colors are still kinda odd. And on the top of windows, where it says " file, edit, view " etc...etc.. those still look weird.

But, at least i can read the words and such now. Thanks a ton man! i didn't think about re-starting my PC after turning that effect off.

Finally, instead of posting the problems I'm having, I'm actually helping other people fix problems, yay!!!