Fix DPI scaling for RDP connections to Windows VMs

KB623: Created By inflectra.max | Friday, August 18, 2023 | 11753 Views | Last Updated: 8/18/2023

If you connect to a Windows VM via RDP and see that all fonts are very small and it is hard to read text on screen then this article is for you. If you can access the VM without RDP then you may change scaling via Display Settings in Windows and thus make text larger. But if this VM is Azure or AWS hosted VM then you may see a message: the display settings can't be changed from a remote session.

The steps depend on the version of the remote Windows OS.

Windows Server 2016, 2019

Change registry settings and reboot

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\IgnoreClientDesktopScaleFactor

– If IgnoreClientDesktopScaleFactor does not exist then create a new DWORD value

– Type in Decimal Value:

Turn on = 1

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\LogPixels

– If LogPixels does not exist then create a new DWORD value

– Type in Decimal Value

96 for Smaller 100%

120 for Medium 125%

144 for Larger 150%

192 for 200%

Windows 10