subtle windows7 start menu icon size shift with plugable display adapter in play

tom_trafzer · February 10, 2015, 12:41am

start menu icons change size:
when using plugable usb-to-hdmi adapter, win7(64) start menu icons and quicklaunch toolbar icons increase in size (and NOT in the way they change when using “personalize” options in windows *; they’re just a *little* bit larger *, which causes the start menu and the quicklaunch areas to rearrange most annoyingly when you had them “just so” for the former, smaller size). taking the plugable adapter out of the equation (and rebooting) returns everything to former, slightly smaller appearance/arrangement. is there a way to control/change this behavior? [hp zbook 17]

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Pluga_Bob · February 10, 2015, 1:26am

Hi Tom,

Thanks for posting! I’d be happy to help with your display settings.

There are a couple of things that might be happening here. You don’t mention how you have your displays configured when the adapter is plugged in to the laptop. Are you duplicating the internal display to the external, or are you extending it? If duplicating, what is the native resolution of your laptop display and what is the native resolution of the monitor? There are a couple of scenarios in terms of the resolution settings and how Windows 7 is scaling the displays that could be causing the behavior you describe.

The best way to proceed would be to get more details about your setup. We have developed a utility called PlugDebug which gathers some information about your system. It is available from this link:

http://plugable.com/support/plugdebug

If you run that application it will gather all the details of how the display settings are configured for your system and create a .ZIP file on your desktop. Ideally you would run the program twice, once with the adapter disconnected and a second time with the adapter connected and the external display attached. That will allow us to see the difference between the two. It would also be helpful if you could take photos of the whole setup with your smartphone so we can see what you are seeing (again, two shots showing the before and after).

If you could gather that information and send it to support@plugable.com with ‘Ticket 89395’ in the subject line we can go from there.

Thank you,

Bob
Plugable Technologies
www.plugable.com/support

tom_trafzer · February 14, 2015, 3:11am

Thanks for the response. Here’s the information you solicited:

When the adapter is plugged in to the laptop, my displays configured to extend the desktop to the additional monitors.

Monitor “1” (far left) is the internal display @1600x900 (max possible).

Monitor “2” is an LG W2253, as the far right monitor, @1920x1080 (max possible), plugged in to the laptop displayport (adapted to DVI, adapted to HDMI).

Monitor “3” is an LG 24M35, as the center monitor, @1920x1080 (max possible), plugged into USB3/plugable DisplayLink.

ACND4393C53_20150213_171905.zip is WITH the plugable adapter and all 3 monitors.

ACND4393C53_20150213_183103.zip is withOUT the plugable – it is just the laptop.

The 4 attached images, intuitively named, contrast the size of the quicklaunch icons and the startmenu size with and without the plugable adapter. Without, the QL icons are less than 1/8" wide; with, they are over 1.8" wide (and obviously, they proportionally change in height, as well).

Pluga_Bob · February 16, 2015, 9:10pm

Hi Tom,

Thanks for getting back and for the photos. I see you have also emailed us the information and the PlugDebug files I asked for so I will work directly with you via our ticket system.

Thanks,

Bob