[Jovienn]

I've got a dilema. A friend is having a rather unusual problem with his computer. Whenever he goes online, any pictures that are displayed on a web page are blurry, like low resolution. Very low. Text, however, remains perfectly crisp. If he downloads a picture from the Internet, and displays it in Windows Picture Viewer, it too is blurry. However, if he uses Windows Picture Viewer to view pictures downloaded before the problem started, the pictures look fine.

I'm at a total loss. Updating the video drivers has not helped.

Thanks,

Jov

[smax013]

Jovienn said:

I've got a dilema. A friend is having a rather unusual problem with his computer. Whenever he goes online, any pictures that are displayed on a web page are blurry, like low resolution. Very low. Text, however, remains perfectly crisp. If he downloads a picture from the Internet, and displays it in Windows Picture Viewer, it too is blurry. However, if he uses Windows Picture Viewer to view pictures downloaded before the problem started, the pictures look fine.


I'm at a total loss. Updating the video drivers has not helped.


Thanks,


Jov

Are these pictures from a specific website or from ANY website? Have you tried the same pictures on a different computer?



It would be strange for it to be a general problem. My suspicion is that it is an issue with the particular pictures. Thus, the questions.

[Yert]

Tell us more.

I'm thinking that you could try reverting to a restore point before the problem to see if that fixes it.

[Jovienn]

The pictures are from any website. I went to Yahoo.com just to load the main page, plus a couple different MySpace.com pages. In each case the pictures loaded blurry and saved blurry. Again, pictures downloaded previous to the problem will display just fine.

Jov

[Jovienn]

Unfortunately the Restore function is turned off.

[Tunz]

Does it make a difference if he uses a different browser? Which one is he using?

[Jovienn]

He uses MSN's browser, but opening IE does the same thing.

[Tunz]

There are a couple of things you should look at.

You may be connecting through a proxy which compresses images to make downloading quicker. Have you signed up for some internet accelerator service or something like that? Check your connection settings in IE. - Tools > Internet Options > Connections > Settings.

The other thing to check is your DPI settings. Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced. Try a different setting. If it is set to 120, try 96.

Another suggestion would be to use Firefox.

[Yert]

It could be a bad setting... Screen resolution, DPI, ect.

[VladTheImpaler1990]

Well i think you dpi woul be on 120 as that setting will increase the picture and font.

[Jovienn]

I did take a look at the DPI settings and they're currently at 96. No proxy nor accelerator are in use.

Thanks,

Jov

[VladTheImpaler1990]

Have you tried setting it to 120? I think that will decrease the size of the words and pictures but are better graphics( pixels).

[Jovienn]

I set it to 120, rebooted and tried again. No change. I set it back to 96, rebooted and tried again. No change.

[mphenterprises]

Hi Jovienn. Okay, let's summarize what you have tried so far:

Problem:
Online pictures from any website appear blurry - Text is clear

Troubleshooting:

- Downloaded picture and attempts to display picture in Windows Picture Viewer, still blurry

- Use Windows Picture Viewer to view pictures already downloaded, images are clear

- Updating Video Driver did not resolve problem

- System Restore turned off so no Restore Points created

- Viewing same image on another computer *

- Using different browser gives same blurry image

- No Download Accelerator used

- Not connected to the internet via a Proxy Server

- Change of screen resolution and DPI did not resolve problem




Now, the suggestion with an asterisk was not answered as of yet. I believe we can all gather what this response may be; however can you please verify that the another computer (connected to that same internet, if possible) shows the same blurry image. If it does, then your friend may want to contact his or her ISP to see if there were any recent changes. If the images appear clear on the second computer, then the problem is only isolated to the original computer.

As another suggestion, have your friend create another User Account, restart the computer, log in under the new User Account, and then connect to the internet. If the images come up clear in the new User, then the original User Account may have become corrupted. Transferring files from one User Account to another is easy. If it comes to that, I will post the Document that would guide your friend through with that process.

[smax013]

mphenterprises said:

Hi Jovienn. Okay, let's summarize what you have tried so far:

Problem:
Online pictures from any website appear blurry - Text is clear

Troubleshooting:

* Downloaded picture and attempts to display picture in Windows Picture Viewer, still blurry

* Use Windows Picture Viewer to view pictures already downloaded, images are clear

* Updating Video Driver did not resolve problem

* System Restore turned off so no Restore Points created

Viewing same image on another computer

* Using different browser gives same blurry image

* No Download Accelerator used

* Not connected to the internet via a Proxy Server

* Change of screen resolution and DPI did not resolve problem




Now, the suggestion with an asterisk was not answered as of yet. I believe we can all gather what this response may be; however can you please verify that the another computer (connected to that same internet, if possible) shows the same blurry image. If it does, then your friend may want to contact his or her ISP to see if there were any recent changes. If the images appear clear on the second computer, then the problem is only isolated to the original computer.

As another suggestion, have your friend create another User Account, restart the computer, log in under the new User Account, and then connect to the internet. If the images come up clear in the new User, then the original User Account may have become corrupted. Transferring files from one User Account to another is easy. If it comes to that, I will post the Document that would guide your friend through with that process.

It appears the currently downloaded pictures are blurry. If so, then I would suggest copying a picture or two to a flash drive and trying on another computer in addition to trying another computer using the network connection. Be sure to scan the flash drive with anti-virus program on the new computer to be on the safe side.

[Evildave]

Does your friend have a DIAL UP, Satellite or otherwise bandwidth challenged or limited internet account?

If so, it's probably got some 'Net Accelerator' (or whatever) crapware in it. The ISP proxies between your connection and the web and chews up any images it encounters and re-sends them to you at decreased resolution. It does this to 'enhance' your experience, naturally, and not because it saves them money.

There may be settings to disable the 'acceleration' or otherwise increase the resolution of images, trading off a slower internet connection to do it.

Another quick test is if you have some downloaded HTML/image content that is NOT chewed up when you open it, it's because of your ISP.

So go to his ISP's support site and look for anything about that 'acceleration'.

[Jovienn]

As yet I have not tried downloading pics and viewing them on another machine. I'm not sure what would happen, but I'll try it. Since MSN doesn't appear to have any support forums, we sent a message to their support group and are still awaiting a response. The idea of creating another user account is also something we haven't tried, but will give that a whirl asap and report back.

Thanks for all the replies so far....

Jov

[Tunz]

You haven't tried a Mozilla browser yet. IE does not qualify as a "different" browser. In fact, the latest issue of IE is an "optimized for MSN" version.Try Firefox or SeaMonkey; that could tell us a lot.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

[Jovienn]

Here's the latest so far...

We installed Firefox and cruised the net with it. All the pictures looked fine. So we upgraded his IE version 7 and rebooted. This did not appear to fix the problem. However, he called me this morning and said he logged on to MSN and pictures looked good. But when he logged off and logged back on later in the morning, the picture problem returned.

Any ideas?

Jov

[Tunz]

That suggests that the culprit may be MSN's "Dialup Accelerator". Look for it in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel. It may be listed as MSN Connection Center or something like that.