Photo Gallery slideshow full screen in Windows 8.1

Anonymous
2013-11-04T04:50:50+00:00

I don't recall whether the upgrade caused this, i.e., whether fullscreen was functional in Photo Gallery for Windows 8.0 slideshow. Either way, my question is whether or not fullscreen will be implemented in future versions of Photo Gallery slideshow for Windows 8.1 or whether I can do something at my end to activate it now. Apparently fullscreen was available in the Vista version judging from Web chatter but several sources say it is not implemented in Windows 8 and that the Windows Experience Index (WEI) must be above 4 something to allow the fullscreen option. Since the WEI was eliminated in Windows 8.1, I am wondering if that is the problem. My equipment is very new (Dell XPS 2720) with a large high resolution (2560 x 1440) screen. Photos viewed in Photo Gallery slideshow have a large black area to the right and black areas above and below and the photo is not centered. Perhaps it is not possible to implement a fullscreen version, but if that is the case, it should be at least mentioned. Since Photo Gallery has many other useful features, I hope there is something I am doing wrong.

Windows for home | Other | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2015-09-21T18:12:17+00:00

For anyone who is still trying, I found a simple solution!

I am a long time user of photo gallery and have a kind of love/hate relationship with it. I recently discovered this issue after upgrading from windows 7 to 10.

It took me about 30 minutes to find this solution, so unless this is not working for others and just for me, shame on you Microsoft (sorry, couldn't help myself)

So.... here goes:

  1. Locate the Photo Gallery .exe file, in my case and most likely for anyone else:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Photo Gallery\WLXPhotoGallery.exe

  1. right click and select properties.
  2. open compatibility tab
  3. put a tick-mark in "disable display scaling on high DPI settings"
  4. click apply
  5. close properties

Now startup Photo Gallery and try a slideshow.

Please let me know if it worked for you, as it did for me.

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Anonymous
2015-09-21T23:31:50+00:00

Thank You! Finally a solution that works. Why have Microsoft not publicised this?

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-11-20T03:32:19+00:00

    Hi John Ray_ M,

    It's good to hear back from you. MsInfo, Dxdiag and Event Viewer files, oh my! I will need detailed instructions to help you with that. I think we're on the same page. It seems that you correctly understood what I said about image size in Slideshow being basically unchanged with lower screen resolution. In your reply before last, you wrote, "Apparently, we may be looking at a possible integration issue with Photo Gallery with the new Windows 8.1 release". In my first reply, I wrote, "My bet is that Windows 8.1 should display like 7 and 8.0 but it has a bug". You said it so much better than I did, but we both said pretty much the same thing.

    When I make a screenshot it does not display the image in the same proportion to screen size as I see it, so I am including some photos of my monitor. The images are;

    1, A JPEG photo unaltered from my camera. Format 4x6

    2, A screenshot of that photo in slideshow at 1680x1050. Format now (cropped) to approx. 16x9.

    3, A screenshot of that photo in slideshow at 1280x768. Format also (cropped)                                                  4, A photo of my monitor in Photo Gallery at 1680x1050. Format 4x6

    5, A photo of my monitor in Slideshow at 1680x1050. Format as with screenshot.

    6, A photo of my monitor in Slideshow at 1280x768. Format as with screenshot.

    7, A photo of my monitor in Photo Gallery at 1280x768. Format 4x6.

    Note that Slideshow not only displays my photo images at less than full screen, but it also changes their format, or crops them.

    Hope these images help. If there's anything else I can do to help resolve this issue please let me know.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-19T22:34:20+00:00

    Hello JamesWiMe,

    We'd like to request for some log files (MsInfo, Dxdiag and Event Viewer) so that we could have our product group investigate this matter further. Just to be on the same page as well, when you said that there weren't any noticeable changes to the images displayed in slideshow after the resolution was lowered, do you still see the "black bars/borders" around the picture when viewed full screen? A screenshot of this image (in a state where the resolution screen was lowered) would really be helpful so that we could also submit this to our product group so that they could determine the cause of the said problem.

    Sincerely,

    Windows Live Global Escalations Team

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-19T17:27:45+00:00

    You know I have the same problem. when I bought my pc that came with windows 8 it worked fine then I was upgraded to windows 8.1 and now it shows my pictures in the corner with huge black area on side and bottom. why can I not adjust it?

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