Making Windows 7 retina ready

[TweakOnline]

Hey,

I've got bootcamp installed on my MacBook Pro 15'' Retina and it's currently running at 1920x1200 pixels. Why? Because everything on the screen is too small to read when I set it on 2880x1800 pixels.

But, because my display is set to 1920x1200 pixels everything looks very blurry.
Does someone know how to upscale everything?

I've tried to change the DPI of the screen (running at 2880x1800 pixels) to 220 (or something like that). The good news was that the words became a lot bigger but the buttons didn't changed at all. So now I'm stuck.

Hope someone get his / her MacBook perfect running on Windows, and could explain it to me. Thanks!

 

[-Concept-]

Is this what you're asking for? -

From the desktop, right click on your wallpaper and select screen resolution, then change the value to whatever resolution you choose via that slider.

 

[pgiguere1]

Windows 8, although far from perfect, scales much better than Windows 7. I set my screen at 2880x1800 with 200% scaling and it looks pretty good most of the time. Unfortunately, a lot of apps have layout problems, don't scale, or look blurry though.

Windows is not really made for high-res display yet given that there has yet to be a Windows computer with Retina-level pixel density. Either you deal with a sub-optimal resolution like 1920x1200, or you deal with issues related to scaling which apparently isn't a properly implemented feature (yet).

 

[TweakOnline]

Windows 8, although far from perfect, scales much better than Windows 7. I set my screen at 2880x1800 with 200% scaling and it looks pretty good most of the time. Unfortunately, a lot of apps have layout problems, don't scale, or look blurry though.

Windows is not really made for high-res display yet given that there has yet to be a Windows computer with Retina-level pixel density. Either you deal with a sub-optimal resolution like 1920x1200, or you deal with issues related to scaling which apparently isn't a properly implemented feature (yet).

But I really hate Windows 8; I don't like that metro interface and it is much work to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 through Bootcamp (because it formats the partition again, so I have to reinstall +15 games again.)

And by the way, is your battery also draining that quick when you're on Windows? When I'm just browsing, my charged battery runs maximum 3 hours!

 

[Trubbles]

And by the way, is your battery also draining that quick when you're on Windows? When I'm just browsing, my charged battery runs maximum 3 hours!

When you're in Windows, you're always using dGPU (if you have a 15"). Battery life in Windows is not great. I don't think there is any way to get the HD4000 set up in Windows, except through Parallels/VM.

 

[pgiguere1]

But I really hate Windows 8; I don't like that metro interface and it is much work to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 through Bootcamp (because it formats the partition again, so I have to reinstall +15 games again.)

And by the way, is your battery also draining that quick when you're on Windows? When I'm just browsing, my charged battery runs maximum 3 hours!

I don't like Metro either so I installed Start8 to bring back the Windows button, kick me in desktop mode automatically and disable Metro and Charms.

It's normal to have weak battery life since you're always using discrete graphics (dynamic switching is not supported in Windows). Last time mine lasted a bit over 4 hours at 50% brightness.

Are you sure you would have to reinstall all games? Can't you just upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 8 without reformatting?

 

[bill-p]

For Windows 7, set DPI scaling to 199% instead of anything higher.

If that still makes buttons small, then that means the application you're trying to use under Windows doesn't support proper DPI scaling.

Also, disable "XP scaling mode" or whatever it is.

 

[reery]

150 or 200% scaling in Win7/8 looks very good combined with a Firefox addon which scales webpages automatically so 150% or so.

But then comes the problems: Your taskbar will be in the foreground even through fullscreen desktop mode in movies and games. Some games won't let you move the cursor out of an invisible border.

So I left it at 1920x1200 and live with the little blurriness without any bugs.

 

[TweakOnline]

When I change the DPI higher than 150%, my Windows goes weird.
Buttons are small, text are too big and some other issues as well.

Now I've changed the screen DPI to the standard 150% setting of Windows, and now everything seems to be fine. Yes, it is a bit small, but it's ok.

If someone knows how to get text bigger without these issues, please let me know.

Thanks guys!

----------

After playing a little bit with the DPI settings, the best setting for my MBPr 15'' retina is to upscale it 180%. Nothing more...

Now I can compare my screen to the 1920x1200 size, which I really like!

Oh, and I had to turn off the Windows XP scaling mode. Thanks @bill-p!

 

[bill-p]

Yeah, no prob. XP scaling mode just scales texts instead of buttons.

But I'd still recommend 199%. It makes texts a bit bigger and gives you about the same 2x feeling. For some reason, 200% messes with the cursor and makes it pixelated.

Oh, and talking about the cursor, you may want to set it to "Super Large" or it may be hard to see sometimes.

 

[TweakOnline]

Yeah, no prob. XP scaling mode just scales texts instead of buttons.

But I'd still recommend 199%. It makes texts a bit bigger and gives you about the same 2x feeling. For some reason, 200% messes with the cursor and makes it pixelated.

Oh, and talking about the cursor, you may want to set it to "Super Large" or it may be hard to see sometimes.

I want to ask you, do you know how to make a OSX partition (in this case my boot camp partition) larger? Thanks for your help!

 

[bill-p]

Unfortunately, after Bootcamp, there's nothing else you can do to change the partitions layout. The only thing you can do is backup your entire Bootcamp partition, then erase it via OSX, share everything again, and restore the backup.

I haven't seen a better way to deal with it.

 

[TweakOnline]

Unfortunately, after Bootcamp, there's nothing else you can do to change the partitions layout. The only thing you can do is backup your entire Bootcamp partition, then erase it via OSX, share everything again, and restore the backup.

I haven't seen a better way to deal with it.

Aha, I get it.
I will have to use my external hdd anyway, but I wanted 10GB space extra to install Call of Duty to my internal drive.