Interesting problem yesterday. I have clients who run surveillance camera software (CMS) on their computers. The software pulls the feed from their networked dvr system. The network has mixed client hardware, i.e., each client has different monitors and a different workstation (though I've almost got each client the same workstation now), so I installed the CMS software to match the client's screen resolution choice. After setup, there have been no problems with the CMS configuration for many months.
Yesterday, I received a call from one of the clients. He told me when he clicked on the CMS icon a window appeared with a message "screen resolution must be at least 1024 x 768." I asked him to please check his resolution, walked him through that process and, no surprise, found out his monitors (he has two) both have that resolution. I'm not far from the client so I just made the walk over to his office. I checked the resolution to just knock that off my troubleshooting list and I couldn't believe that CMS still wouldn't run. I was truly bamboozled. Windows screen resolution is 1024 x 768, but CMS wouldn't run because the resolution had to at least be 1024 x 768? Confusing. It was just confusing.
He has an nvidia video card with a control panel. So, I checked that just out of curiosity and obviously the resolution there matched Windows. I checked the Windows Update history. He said CMS worked just fine Friday. Their systems do windows updates over the weekend, so I thought maybe there had been a big update or something. The only update over the weekend was an update for Windows Defender. To my knowledge, that wouldn't have anything to do with my problem. After drumming my fingers for a little bit, I decided to reinstall the software sine it's a simple install. I reinstalled the software hoping that would fix the issue. It didn't. I truly didn't know what to do. Trying not to panic, I went through my history list with this system (these are very helpful) and found that when setting up the system I enlarged the display text to the maximum size, which is 150%. I checked the text size and it was still set to 150%. I turned it down to medium 125%, logged off then logged back in and clicked on CMS. The software ran. Again, bamboozled. Since I reinstalled CMS earlier, I had to configure the software with the dvr (less than 5 minutes) and it worked just fine. I asked the client if that display size was fine and he said it looked great (though back in the day of setting up this system he liked the max size...no comment). So, I left the display size alone at 125% with the screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Which the only difference is between then and now is the display size.
What happened? I don't know. Event viewer didn't tell me anything either. My client is happy, but I'm perplexed about CMS suddenly not recognizing that Windows did have the correct resolution for the software and that the software worked fine for many months with the 150% text display.
To any readers: thoughts?
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