So my wife just got a new laptop (a pretty boss Lenovo Yoga 2), with Windows 8.1 on it.  The thing runs at a resolution that I'm torn between describing as "unlimited cosmic power" and "hilariously large numbers".  You'd have to add both of my monitors together to get that many pixels.  Anyhow, this comes with some interesting side effects.  One of which is this: Some software will have a tiny installer window, so small that you can't see the licensing agreement or the radio buttons to agree to it.  Being an installer window, it's of a fixed size and you can't resize it.  Suddenly, you can't install your software.  In my wife's case, this was Cricut Design Studio's plugin, and their support staff, while very nice and extremely well-meaning, will have you download the plugin from every browser under the sun, but -- and you may have already guessed this -- the browser you download the .exe file with doesn't really matter when your problem is that the installer itself won't let you install the plugin.  Perhaps which browser downloads the plugin matters for which browser it gets installed to, but installing to the wrong browser is a problem to be solved after you can install the software at all.  I've also seen this mentioned on the internet in regards to Open Office, and I'm guessing a lot of people on shiny new laptops have issues with install windows that are too small and can't be made bigger.

So here's the solution: Open up your display properties by right clicking the desktop (or typing Display in the Start Screen and clicking on the thing that comes up).  There's going to be a slider or a series of radio buttons for adjusting the scaling, or it might even call it "DPI" depending on your settings.  If you've got a resolution with really big numbers, that scaling is probably in the maximum setting; just so that you can see your mouse cursor without needing reading glasses.  Unfortunately, your fixed-size installer window requires eensy-weensy-eyestrain-o-vision to work right.  So you need to either click on the minimum radio button or drag the scale slider all the way to the right (100% is the smallest you get to scale to in most cases).  Now, once you've done that and hit apply, you'll get a mouse cursor that's so tiny as to be impossible to see on the screen, and it probably will display text and buttons and icons so tiny that they need a magnifying glass to be witnessed.  However -- and this is the really important bit that I initially overlooked -- you aren't done yet. Windows might pop up a little box that says you'll need to log out for all the changes to occur.  I've been around the block a few times, and generally consider those boxes to be liars.  Most of the time, Windows is just fine implementing your changes now, and the logout/login stuff is just making sure everything works and can be safely skipped.  Not this time.  If you don't actually sign out, Windows won't think you're totally serious about making everything unreadably tiny, and it won't fix the information in the install window, so sign out.

Once you've signed back in, everything is so small you can't find it.  But if you can fumble around until you find the installer file you were trying to run before, you'll discover that it now actually will display all of its contents.  Sure, you'd need bifocals or maybe binoculars to actually readthe license agreement, but at least you can actually see the "I agree" button, and that's what we're trying to solve here.  So go through the install process, and then, for the love of your squinting eyes, set the scaling factor back up to whatever value it was before and do the whole sign out/sign in dance again.  Finally, the software is installed and all is right in the world.  And it just goes to show you, sometimes these things befuddle even a computer programmer and her system administering husband, so don't feel too dumb when "Why is it so tiny?! I just wanted to be able to use this software on my new computer!" and you can't solve it on your own.