I don’t know what’s sadder, the fact that I still have to go through this workaround to get my NVIDIA graphics card to display the correct color range to my HDTV over HDMI, or that this page of essential instructions has been lost to the internet. I have grabbed the text from The Wayback Machine and am reposting it in case others could use the help.

The following text originally appeared on the following webpage (I will gladly give attribution if the proper owner is identified):

http://files.bortweb.com/how_to_fix_nvidia_blurry_fuzzy_screen_or_text.htm

How to fix NVIDIA blurry or fuzzy screen or text caused by driver installation

Symptoms

You install the NVIDIA drivers and your screen or text becomes kind of “fuzzy” or “blury”.

Kind of “washed-out”, but not quite.

It might look almost as if it was not displaying in 32-bit color, even though it is.

If you put your mouse cursor over a [blue]{style=”color:blue;”} background, you see a ghosted image of your mouse pointer next to it. 
This “ghosting” happens, not when moving fast like LCD screen ghosting, but just when the mouse is sitting still.

The ghosting occurs with all objects, not just the mouse – including window borders, etc, and it’s mostly in the vertical orientation.

When you UNINSTALL the drivers, it returns to normal. When you INSTALL the drivers, the problem re-appears.

The problem can occur on many different hardware and software platforms, including WinXP, WinVista, Win7, Linux;

… including many different NVIDIA GeForce cards;

… including many different monitors (both LCD and CRT & both 4:3 and widescreen aspect ratios).

Solution

This is nothing new. NVIDIA has been aware of this problem for YEARS, and has done nothing. They do not officially recognize this as a problem. Yet search in google for “nvidia blurry screen” or “nvidia blurry text” and you will clearly see hundreds of people asking for help with this problem. If you havn’t experienced it yet, consider yourself one of the lucky majority. But do not doubt that it is a real annoying problem for many many others.

The problem is simply that a registry key is missing from the NVIDIA installer .inf file. We must find that file and add the appropriate line of text, before running the setup. Here is the step-by-step instructions to do it:

Part I - Get the drivers

  1. If you have not done so, go to nvidia.com and download the drivers for your card.
  2. Run the driver executable. A wizard will come up, asking you where it should extract the files, and you will have to click a checkbox that says something on the order of “I agree” and click next a few times.
  3. Eventually, it will pop up a different wizard – a NVIDIA-decorated one that looks like the following screenshot. When you see it, cancel the wizard, and of course tell it that “you’re sure” that you want to cancel, etc.
  4. Ok, now navigate to the folder that you told it to extract to in the above wizard. There is a file in there called nv_disp.inf or it could be something else (depending on your driver version), like nv4_disp.inf ornv_disp_win7.inf. The path should look something like this:
    c:\\NVIDIA\\*\<your OS\>*\\*\<your driver version number\>*\\*\<your language\>*\\nv_disp.inf
  5. Open that file up with notepad.
  6. Ok minimize this file. We’re going to set it off to the side for now, but we will come back to it in a minute and add a line or two of text in it.

Part II - Find your monitor’s unique EDID

The EDID is different for every type of monitor. You need to find it by doing this:

  1. First, you need to use an EDID editor to find your monitor’s unique line. To do that, download this utility, unzip, and run it.
    http://www.tucows.com/preview/329441 (Alternate download: Phoenix_1_3.zip)
  2. Ok when it’s open, click New.
  3. Click Extract Registry EDID.
  4. This box will pop up. Make sure you click on the row, before clicking the Extract EDID button.
  5. Now all the info will be filled in the boxes. Click the Byte Viewer button.
  6. This screen with all the numbers will appear. The numbers you need are in Row 00, Columns 08 thru 0B

Part III - Prepare the line that we will need to stick in the .inf file

As I said previously, the problem is the lack of a registry key in the installer .inf file. Basically, when it installs without this registry key, it doesn’t know the details about your monitor that it needs to make a sharp picture. So all we have to do is supply it with the right info in the form of this line.

  1. Most of the line is the same for everyone:
    HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags0,%REG_BINARY%,**XX**,**XX**,**XX**,**XX**,00,00,FF,FF,04,00,00,00,7E,01,00
  2. The XX,XX,XX,XX is the four bytes you got from the EDID in the previous part (circled in [red]{style=”color:red;”} in the screenshot above). Again, they are different for each monitor.

Part IV - Putting the line you made into the right spots within the .inf file

  1. Go into the .inf file that you set aside in Part I.

  2. Hit CTRL+F to pull up the Find box and look for any or all of the following sections:

    **\[nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings\]**\ **\[nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings_GT2x\]**\ **\[nv_commonBase_addreg\]**\ **\[nv_commonBase_addreg\_\_01\]**\ **\[nv_commonBase_addreg\_\_02\]**

    Or something else similar. I can’t be too much more specific because depending on what driver you download for whichever graphics card series you have, will determine what sections there are.

  3. For my specific system, I added it (the bold line) to these two sections:
    \[nv_commonBase_addreg\]\ HKLM,"Software\\Microsoft\\TMM",UseIViewHelper,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKLM,"Software\\NVIDIA Corporation\\Global\\Hybrid",AddDeviceSequence,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,Acceleration.Level,%REG_DWORD%,0\ HKR,,FeatureControl,%REG_DWORD%,4\ HKR,,InstalledDisplayDrivers,%REG_MULTI_SZ%,"nvd3dum"\ HKR,,MultiFunctionSupported,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,RMCacheLoc,%REG_DWORD%,0\ HKR,,RMDisableInst2Sys,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,UseBestResolution,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,UserModeDriverGUID,%REG_SZ%,"{9A516B97-E7C1-451B-9165-C5035994A3F5}"\ HKR,,UserModeDriverName,%REG_MULTI_SZ%,"nvd3dum.dll"\ **HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags0,%REG_BINARY%,5C,85,80,51,00,00,FF,FF,04,00,00,00,7E,01,00**
    \[nv_commonBase_addreg\_\_02\]\ HKLM,"Software\\Microsoft\\TMM",UseIViewHelper,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKLM,"Software\\NVIDIA Corporation\\Global\\Hybrid",AddDeviceSequence,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKLM,"Software\\NVIDIA Corporation\\Installer",PhysXInstall,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,Acceleration.Level,%REG_DWORD%,0\ HKR,,D3D_39482904,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,FeatureControl,%REG_DWORD%,4\ HKR,,InstalledDisplayDrivers,%REG_MULTI_SZ%,"nvd3dum"\ HKR,,InstalledDisplayDrivers,%REG_SZ_APPEND%,"nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um"\ HKR,,MultiFunctionSupported,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,RMCacheLoc,%REG_DWORD%,0\ HKR,,RMDisableInst2Sys,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,UseBestResolution,%REG_DWORD%,1\ HKR,,UserModeDriverGUID,%REG_SZ%,"{9A516B97-E7C1-451B-9165-C5035994A3F5}"\ HKR,,UserModeDriverName,%REG_MULTI_SZ%,"nvd3dum.dll"\ HKR,,UserModeDriverName,%REG_SZ_APPEND%,"nvwgf2um.dll"\ HKR,,UserModeDriverName,%REG_SZ_APPEND%,"nvwgf2um.dll "\ **HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags0,%REG_BINARY%,5C,85,80,51,00,00,FF,FF,04,00,00,00,7E,01,00**
  4. After you added your unique line to the proper places, save the .inf file and close it. Proceed to Part V.

Part V - Finishing

  1. Go to control panel & uninstall your current video drivers.
  2. Go to the folder and click setup.exe to install the drivers with the modified .inf file.
  3. There will be a message asking if you’re sure you want to install the driver b/c its not trusted or something like that. That’s just b/c you modified the .inf file and the checksum didn’t add up. Click OK to install anyway.
  4. Everything should be good now, if you did it right. If not, then you did all this for nothing b/c you obviously had some other problem from the one I am talking about in this How-To. Good luck!