Roughly 90% of all 10 inch netbooks on the market today have 1024 x 600 pixel displays. OK, I made that number up off the top of my head, but aside from a handful of models with 1024 x 576 or 1366 x 768 pixel screens, it’s pretty much true. Most netbooks have the same display resolution. And while it’s generally good enough for viewing most web pages, videos, and other apps, every now and again you’re likely to run into an application that requires a higher resolution screen to run. Fortunately, there’s a way to trick your netbook into thinking it has a higher resolution display — assuming you’re running Windows 7.

Here’s how it works. You have to search for a registry setting called “Display1_DownScalingSupported” and change the value from 0 to 1. You can find step by step instructions at Netbook Live.

Once you’ve made the change and rebooted your computer, you should be able to use the built in display resolution tool in Windows 7 to try out two new resolutions: 1024 x 768 and 1152 x 864. Both will provide a bit of extra space on your screen, making it easier to work with programs that have large windows or minimum display resolution requirements higher than 1024 x 600.

This solution is similar to the driver update I told you about last month.

But there is a catch. You’re not actually creating more pixels on your display. That’s physically impossible. Instead you’re using software to emulate a higher resolution screen. And that means some of those pixels are going to be shaped funny. The result is that text will look a bit fuzzy and hard to read. To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend you try this at all unless you’re desperately trying to get run some game or other app that won’t run under any other conditions.

Post from: Liliputing

Hack to increase the screen resolution on Windows 7 netbooks