Distorted images in Internet Explorer

One of our clients recently complained that the images on their website were looking distorted and fuzzy when viewed in Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. We tried to replicate the problem on our own IE6/XP setup but we could find any problem. We asked our client to try other computers and browsers in his office and they worked just fine too.

After a long and drawn out process of elimination, googling and head scratching, Ian finally came across an article that talked about distorted images in Internet Explorer caused by the operating system using non-standard DPI settings.

Basically, there's a setting in the advanced settings of the display control panel that allows you to change the DPI from 96 (normal) to 120 (oversize). This setting is sometimes used to increase system font size but has the side effect of badly scaling all images in Internet Explorer by 125% - hence the distortion and fuzziness.

Needless to say, after changing the DPI setting back to 96, our client's problem was resolved.