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Resolution is quite small for Windows Server 2003 in Remote desktop connection.

Anonymous
2014-07-15T09:56:39+00:00

Hi all,

I have just installed Windows 8.1 Pro on a corporate laptop and this is a touch screen model too.

I am required to access via Remote Desktop Connection quite often but it appears that the resolution is quite small for Windows Server 2003 or any other general RDP. This is getting inconvenient when I have to switch to lower resolution when using RDP.

Does anyone else encounter this and can advise if there is any other walkaround? Thanks in advance!

Original title: Windows 8.1 Pro on Corporate Laptop

Windows Server Remote and virtual desktops Remote desktop services and terminal services

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-07-15T14:53:31+00:00

    I bet that your new laptop has a higher DPI (more pixels, higher-res screen).  Unfortunately these don't scale well when using RDP to another computer, and everything on the remote PC seems incredibly tiny.

    I'm not sure of a workout for it but I'll look.  So far I've been the only one annoyed by this :)

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-07-15T18:05:12+00:00

    Hi Shawn,

    Do you mean laptops installed with Wins 8 that have lower DPI will not have this issue?

    Any idea if Lenovo E440 has high or low DPI? Currently, my laptop default DPI is at 3200 x 1800 and is a touch-screen. Not sure if it is touch-screen that causes this or generally newer models are like that.

    Do you have any idea? Thanks in advance.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-07-15T18:20:07+00:00

    That's it.  Your laptop with that high resolution, everything would normally like pretty tiny, but it's scaling it up on your locally-running programs.  If you right-click the desktop and go to Resolution, then click make the fonts and other items large or smaller, you'll see the scaling % that it is using to increase the size of everything (probably 150% or 200% on a DPI as high as yours).  But the remote computer when you remote desktop, it's not aware of this and so it shows everything at the normal 100% size, causing it to appear very small.

    Some material I've come across seems to suggest that you can change this during a remote desktop session, but I don't have the ability to test it out myself right now.  If you want to try, here's how:

    1. Connect to the remote computer
    2. Right-click the remote computer's desktop, go to Resolution
    3. Go to the make text and other items larger or smaller
    4. Try to adjust the scaling here, then apply and see if it takes effect.  You might have to log out (which would end your remote desktop session) and then log back into the remote computer to fully see the change.

    I believe this will require that the remote computer is also using Windows 8, but again I haven't been able to test here yet.

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