Reset Display Settings? (1 Viewer)

[Carl Miller]

I made the mistake of running Windows Washer on my computer...On the plus side, it cleared out 4 Gigs of space on my drive.

On the bad side, it also changed all my display settings and I can't seem to get them back to how they used to be.

I know where to go to try of course, and have already spent a couple of hours trying to restore them without success.

Does anyone know of a way to restore them to their default settings? Or know what those default setttings are so they can be reset manually?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

1) Which version of Windows do you have?

2) What do you mean by "display settings"? If you right-click on your desktop and select "properties" you'll get a box with multiple tabs for "themes", "desktop", "screen saver", "appearance", and "settings". Each tab has multiple items that can be changed. What, specifically, did the program alter?

3) When you say "restore them to their default settings" do you mean restore them to the Windows default settings they used out of the box? Or your default settings, including any changes you made to colors, wallpaper, etc. Personalized settings can be restored, but as far as I know this can only be done if you've saved them as a theme. (Which is what I always do.) You just go to the themes page and save "current settings" under some identifiable name. Then you can pick that theme if something changes later. But if you've never saved your settings, there is nothing to restore from.

4) Depending on your Windows version you might be able to use System Restore to roll your system back to before the changes were made, and then either save your settings as a theme or go through the display properties and record all the settings so that you can get them back after running the clean-up program again. You did set a restore point before running it the first time, didn't you?

Regards,

Joe

 

[Carl Miller]

Joe,

WinXP, service pack 2 I guess it is by now. My only major problem is that the text showing up on my screen is now very dark but it's not set to bold. For example, the text showing here in posts and everywhere on the internet is now bold in appearance. That isn't the only setting that was changed, but it's the one that bothers me the most

I never saved the default settings as a theme and was using them as they were out of the box.

And no, I don't have a restore point. I turned that feature off last week while manually removing a virus via the registry and never turned the feature back on. :b

In the appearance tab you described, there is no option for font for the "window text". It's greyed out.
The theme showing "my current theme (modified)" though I never modified it, and when changing it, the font still comes up as appearing bold, though no option for bolding the current font is available.

Since I have no saved theme I guess I can't revert to any prior settings. I thought for sure I'd find something that details the out of the box default settings, but none exists that I can find.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

On the Appearance tab do you have Windows XP or Windows Classic selected under Windows and buttons? I ask because I have Windows XP and I don't have a font option, only a font size option.

You can still choose a preset theme even if you haven't selected one. Hit the drop-down under themes and choose one of the pre-built ones. The Windows XP deafault should get you something very close to what you started with.

Also check the various places where you can choose the font size, including the "view" menu in Internet Explorer.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Carl Miller]

Thanks Joe!

I just figured it out. Appearance tab, advanced, effects...changing the 'smooth edges of screen fonts' to standard did the trick.