Fuzzy Text, I don't have qw.exe

luckygirl72

I had to restore my Samsung Book4 today and reinstall Quicken. I now, once again, have blurry text in quicken. I couldn't remember what I did last time to fix it, so I googled it and found the fix for the qw.exe file. I don't seem to have that file, so I applied the fix to the qw file. This corrected the blurriness but made everything else way to small. Can anyone help? TIA

Attaching screenshot

for reference

Jim_Harman

I can't comment on blurriness, but to see the file name extensions in Windows Explorer for Windows 11, click on View > Show and select File name extensions.

If everything is too small, not just Quicken, right click on the desktop and select Display settings. Under scale, set it to the recommended setting or higher, often 125% for a laptop.

NotACPA

@luckygirl72 You really don't need to see the full name. In your "black and white" graphic, QW that's an "application" is QW.exe.

I find it curious, however, that the .DLL extensions are showing but not the .EXE extensions … not that it really matters.

And, regarding the size, that could be either a Win issue (check your Win System settings) or a Q issue (see VIEW, Use Large Fonts).

Rocket J Squirrel

Microsoft Windows has an unbelievably stupid default of hiding "known" file extensions. Everyone should disable this hiding. Here are a couple of ways to do it in Windows 10. One is to "view" extensions and the other is to "not hide" extensions.

Chris_QPW

You didn't mention what "fix" you found. Stating what you did might help, but here is the situation.

What you are dealing with is much more commonly referred to here is the "Hi-resolution screen problem". Not really accurate description, but that is what you will find it referred to if you search.

What the real problem is "windows scaling". It is just that when a user has a "hi-resolution" screen they tend to (and Windows recommend) using scaling. The more scaling, the more likely the problem will come up. I haven't seen any hard fast numbers, but in general 125% doesn't seem to have a problem, but much over that does. And this really going to depend on the size of your screen. If you have a 25" screen and a 10" screen clearly with the same resolution the 10" is going to cram the pixels closer together.

Back in the day there was no scaling. You might change the resolution of your screen which depending on your screen size would make text bigger or smaller, but that was about it. But that comes at a cost, you get bigger characters, but you start to see the dots.

That is where scaling comes in. You have a screen that if you printed the character in an 8x8 matrix would look way to small, so you instead scale it up 16x16 (this is like changing the Windows scaling from 100% to 200%). Quicken's "Large fonts" is in fact this kind of scaling, but instead of done at the operating system level it was down at the program level. Quicken's "Large Fonts" is about 120%.

Now here is the main problem. When Quicken entered the world there wasn't any "scaling" in the operating system or libraries that it used. And to this day Quicken still uses some very old libraries. And the problem is that which scaling these different ways of drawing things on the screen there isn't one method that will work for them all. Some results are parts don't get scaled and you get sections of Quicken that are tiny, the other side of it is you get good sized text, but it is blurry.

I don't see many of these kinds of comments these days, mostly because Quicken Inc has been working on such problems as they can. But one thing people always get wrong in their request this statement "fix the problem" or "just add variable scaling like Excel has, how hard can it be?". It isn't "a problem", different parts of Quicken "behave differently", and as such they have to not solve "one problem", they have to solve tons of problems as they can get to them, provided there is even a way to make the code scale right. Ironically the adding of Large Fonts to Quicken makes this problem harder, it is another scaling on top of what Windows has. So, for instance, when they tell people that to run Quicken you need a min resolution of 1024x768, there are several "ifs" after that. That is if you aren't using Large Fonts, and your Windows scaling is 100%. Start changing those and the min changes.

I believe one of the SuperUsers has a template answer that has more of the workarounds, but here is what my quick search came up with:

UI issues on high resolution monitor — Quicken

Workaround for Display Issues on High Resolution Monitors | Quicken

luckygirl72

I didn't explain "the fix" because it is easy to find with a quick internet search and anyone familiar with this issue knows the fix (workaround). My problem is that I don't have the files that are listed in the steps of the workaround. If you look at the links you sent, the files are qw.exe and qw.exe.manifest. My screenshot shows that I don't have either of those.

Rocket J Squirrel

@luckygirl72 You have the files, but Windows is hiding the extensions such as .EXE; Please see my post above to easily remedy this.

luckygirl72

Thank you all for your responses. I did previously apply the fix to the qw file (assuming that it was probably the qw.exe), but it made everything in Quicken too small (see screenshots). It did not effect the rest of my computer. Thanks for the tip on showing file extensions.

mshiggins

Presuming this referenced post below is the solution you used:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7932484/the-quicken-software-displays-fuzzy-not-crisp-text

And the new problem is the fonts are too small, have you tried View | Use Large Fonts?

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20467969#Comment_20467969

As you will see from the threads on the subject, there are various things people have used and some work for some people and not for others and such. There isn't a "this works for everyone" kind of solution. And as such, knowing which "fix" you found would help direct you to "others that might work".

luckygirl72

This is the fix

The problem after applying the fix doesn't just seem to be too small font. It is making everything in quicken smaller (graphics, windows, etc.) where I can't see everything. My screenshot shows this. The File, Edit, Tools…tabs can barely be seen.

Jim_Harman

Is everything on your screen too small, the icons in your desktop for example, or is it just Quicken?

If everything is too small, try changing three Scaling setting as I described above.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20468062#Comment_20468062

"Scaling" isn't "changing the font size", it is literally changing the size of everything on that screen or application if it is limited to one application.

So, let's talk about the "fix".

It sounds like you selected this setting:

I will be the first to admit that these settings are very confusing on what they actually do, and that I don't have a 100% grasp of what each does, but this one sounds like. "Override any kind of scaling the application (Quicken) is doing and have Windows try to scale everything in the application.".

Now here is where the "mixing of different GUI libraries" kicks in. The "application menu" (the one with File, …) is definitely not a "modern GUI library" and has been known to not scale right in these kinds of cases.

You might try this setting:

With selecting with both the "I signed in to Windows" and "I opened the program".

There might be other things what people can suggest, but from what I know, Quicken has never had a "perfect setting" what works for all and in some cases have to live with it not scaling right in all parts of Quicken.

Chris_QPW

I think this is the FAQ on this I was looking for:

FAQ: Windows Scaling Problems (text or controls not properly sized) — Quicken

But it is really old so it might not apply.

Also, like the others have suggested using View → Use Large Fonts "might help". It will certainly change the scaling up to about 120%.