The only thing I've been able to do to get the icons and screen setting anywhere close to what they should be is by going into Catalyst Control Center. I found that somehow my screen settings were on 800x600. I believe my screen is normally set for 1024x768, but when I manually change this setting, the icons and everything, (including my browser page) are still too large. In fact, it seems that the normal settings are somewhere between 1024x768 and 1440x900. However, I cannot seem to get my computer to show the correct settings. It seems that the problem is with Vista, since the giant icons begin when I start the computer up and logon. I don't know what the problem could be! I haven't changed anything recently - this is a mystery to me. The only thing I've been doing differently is turning off the computer more, instead of leaving it on around the clock 24/7.
When I first turn on the computer, there is a page that shows what is booting before I get to the blue logon screen. A friend who is a computer expert set this up for me, since this computer does not have a hard drive light, and he wanted me to be able to see that everything was loading as it should. Only at this point does everything - characters, etc. look normal. So I'm convinced there is some problem with Vista.
I just ran a full AntiVir scan yesterday and it found some problems which were all healed.
Just changed monitors to see if this helped. Wow - very weird. When I attached my Sharp monitor (15") to the tower, at first I got an error about "out of time" that was clearly a monitor error. As soon as I clicked a few buttons (menu, on/off) on the monitor, however, my settings seemed to correct themselves while plugged into the Sharp monitor and the error message disappeared. So, at first I couldn't see the taskbar and everything appeared stretched vertically, but then the monitor righted itself. So, at this point, the problem seems to be with the monitor, but I'm wondering if anyone else has had problems with Vison monitors?
The other problem I'm having is with my monitor changing colors - it is only 1 year old. It's a Vison, and I think this problem is more hardware than anything else. It seems to change to a darker brownish color, but still shows color images, etc. sometimes. This seems to happen when the plug connecting the monitor to my computer tower slips a little. It's very random.
AT this point, I'm more concerned with this very weird thing happening with my monitor settings that seems related to Vista. I never had this problem with my previous monitor.