Saturday, November 28, 2009

Windows Virtual PC Color Depth and ClearType

To get ClearType font smoothing back on your Windows Virtual PCs:
http://winterdom.com/2009/10/windows-virtual-pc-and-cleartype

Also learned from this thread that turning off Integration Features will let you set the color quality to 32-bit (as opposed to just 16-bit when Integration Features is on), and ClearType comes back (at least on my XP vpc).

To enable 24-bit color depth on an XP virtual PC (say, for Virtual XP Mode), see Microsoft's article: HOW TO: Connect to Terminal Services with Color Resolution That Is Greater Than 256 in Windows XP
After making the change described in the how-to, close the vpc and restart it. Then inside the vpc, go to display settings and set it to 24-bit color. At this point, you can also set font smoothing to ClearType, and it looks like it works.

1 comment:

  1. at least in Windows 7 64-bit Windows Virtual PC (I'm using the Windows XP sp3 IE7 VHD), you can have "Integration Features" enabled and have ClearType working in Internet Explorer 7 at the same time.

    found the first part of the information here:

    http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/12/16/how-to-increase-color-depth-and-quality-of-windows-xp-accessed-via-remote-desktop-or-terminal-services/

    First, disable Integration Features before continuing with the procedure. After changing the maximum color depth limit, re-enable the integration features.

    1. In the Windows XP operating system (remote system), click on Start menu, then Run.
    2. Type GPEdit.msc to open Group Policy Editor.
    3. Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Terminal Services.
    4. In the right pane, double-click on the Limit Maximum Color Depth setting.
    5. In the Properties dialog, select radio button of Enabled, and then set Color Depth value to 24 bit.
    6. restart the image by going to ACTION > RESTART (very top left of the Windows Virtual PC program).

    then from this link:

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprovirt/thread/7ccc8c6f-7580-4c2d-97e1-5ecbfefe47fe

    1. In the Windows XP operating system (remote system), click on Start menu, then Run.
    2. Type regedit to open the Registry Editor.
    3. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations]
    4. add a new DWORD called "AllowFontAntiAlias" (without quotes) and set the value to one. The value will display as "0x00000001(1)"
    5. restart the image by going to ACTION > RESTART (very top left of the Windows Virtual PC program).

    you may or may not have to restart between each step, but I did. After this, I had the "Integration Features" enabled with ClearType working in Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Virtual PC.

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