Blurry text with Windows 7

I have an old LCD monitor (6 years or so) but through DVI it looked great on my old XP machine. Just got Windows 7 on a new computer but it only has a VGA connection at the back. Ive messed around with various settings in Windows and on the monitor itself, but the text just doesnt look right and appears abit blurry.

Weirdly if i move a dialog box from the corner on the monitor to the centre, the text does become crystal clear, so dunno why it only looks like this in the centre of the monitor?

So a few possible theories on what it could be

1) Only monitor that just isnt working correctly with Windows 7?
2) The change from DVI to VGA means its not as clear?

I was thinking of buying a new one

Tried adjusting Cleartype? control panel>display> in left pane Adjust cleartype text.

Yup still same. Video and images are fine, just text. As im typing this i can see the text getting clearer as i get closer to the centre of the screen. Maybe its just old and i need a new one?

Have you double checked the native resolution for the monitor and set it accordingly?

Was just about to say that, Always found graphics card needs to be set to monitor max resolution.

Discovered this with the old 2004 laptop. only one graphics card setting worked and that was the monitor resolution.

Beaten to it, had the same idea and camieabz

Yep set to max which is the native res

Hmm seem to have fixed it. Changed the refresh rate from 72hz to 60hz and it looks a lot clearer now. never changed refresh rate before so but hey, seems better

I assumed higher refresh rate was always better too

It is, but the monitor and the gfx card has to be capable of it @ a given resolution.

Actually correction on that. It appears the "phase" setting under the screen controls was off. Apparently this doesnt need setting with dvi but does with VGA, which would explain why it was never an issue before. Changing that makes it sharper.

What does phase actually do?