Custom Display Resolutions in XP
Having purchased a snazzy new 22" wide screen flat panel monitor and finding everything hunky dory in Windows Vista I tried the same monitor with a Windows XP machine only to find disappointment kicking down my door. When I went to Display Settings in Control Panel and dragged the Resolution slider up, the native resolution of the monitor was not there. Now every flat panel monitor should be run at its native resolution in order to look its best - every "virtual" pixel maps to a real one (or actually a real triad of red, green, and blue) on the screen. The monitor wanted to run at 1680x1050 but my only options were along the lines of 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1080 and so on. This was disappointing because the text and images looked either squashed or stretched. So what to do then? Well, the fix involved a little bit of registry hacking. The registry is essentially Windows' own internal database in which it keeps all its various settings. It's not usually suppose