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After setting my system to use large (120) DPI mode, all the icons on the taskbar and in explorer tree views appear to be hamfistedly scaled up to 20x20 icons. Is there a way to maintain the high DPI and force icon presentation on the taskbar to stay at 16x16?

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closed as off topic by splattne♦, squillman, Brent , Jeff Atwood♦ Jun 12 '09 at 8:16

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2 Answers

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You could run a OS that isn't 8 years old, such as Vista. One of the improvements it has over XP is better support for aesthetic styles than 'hamfistedly resizing 16x16 icons'.

Of course, as mh said, this really isn't a system administration question.

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As I understand it that problem still exists in Vista. It has to do with the operating system not having enough options for icon sizes, so it extrapolates one. – Jack B Nimble Jun 11 '09 at 19:19
Well, it depends on the actual icon being used. AFAIK, XP extrapolates up from the legacy 16x16 or 32x32 icon, while newer versions of Windows will extrapolate down from the larger 64x64 or 128x128 icon. I do notice that resized icons tend to look better when using a non-default DPI under Vista than XP, but don't really care when it's not resized right. – Oesor Jun 11 '09 at 21:33
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Explorer, in any version of Windows, does not provide many "eye candy" options. I would suggest investigating alternative shells, which offer different levels of customization and prettiness, such as Cairo, Aston, BlackBox, Emerge, or many others.

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