When connected to a Windows 2008 R2 remote desktop session, you cannot change the size of the text on your screen (font size / DPI settings).
If you go to “Control Panel” – “Display” you see the message: “the display settings can’t be changed from a remote session.”.
Especially for users with large screens and large resolutions, this can be a real problem.
If you would change the text size settings when not connected to a remote desktop session, windows changes the corresponding values in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics.
I created a simple tool which lets users change their text size in a remote desktop session.
When starting the tool, users will be presented the following options (which are the same as the display settings in control panel):
After selecting the text size, the tool will change the corresponding values in the registry and the user will be prompted to log off. After logging back in, the new text size will be applied.
Change Text Size 1.1 can be downloaded here: Change Text Size