Some Fonts Have Changed on Their Own and Become Unreadable in Some Programs.

For a few weeks now I've had a problem with some fonts/text appearing in bold with terrible kerning making them difficult to impossible to read. I did not consciously change or update anything to make this happen. One day everything looked normal, the next day I turned on the computer and some fonts were not looking great. I cannot figure out why this change happened.

I first had this issue a few months ago where it was isolated to effecting only Skype text chat (contacts list and list of conversations in Skype was unaffected) at which point I asked the Windows forums on Microsoft's website with no solution found. Then for unrelated reasons I had to do a fresh install of Windows 11 which ended up fixing the font issue in Skype at least. A few weeks go by and everything is fine, but then a couple weeks ago the issue suddenly reappeared but this time with random text around the internet and email. I mainly use Firefox, but the issue persists in Edge as well. I've looked at identical emails and webpages on a Windows 11 laptop I have and the text there looks normal (example below).

I have tried or tested:

• Browser doesn't seem to matter.
• This issue cannot be replicated on another computer I have running Windows 11 Home 23H2.
• Video drivers are up to date.
• I've done the "Adjust ClearType Text"
• Calibrated the HDR using "Windows HDR Calibration" app
• Turn HDR on and off
• Restarted computer
• Run Microsoft store updates
• Downloaded some random official fonts from the Microsoft store hoping one of them was missing and it would fix it
• Run Windows updates (not updated to 24H2 as I've heard its causing some major issues on some computers)

Both examples have been captured using Windows Snipping tool from Nike's website.

These are the broken fonts captured on my desktop computer. While its a less severe example, it happens with all font sizes and if the text is small enough its very difficult to read. The text is a bold sans-serif.

This screen cap is from the same portion of the same website viewed on the W11 Laptop. Its a serif font, not bold and much easier to read.

As configured in Firefox ?
Try changing the “Allow pages...” and compare.

here within the tutorials is a list of font changes that can be done.

maybe one of these would be able to help.
best of luck, Steve ..

abactuon said:

As configured in Firefox ?
Try changing the “Allow pages...” and compare.

Click to expand...

This worked, but I checked another computer running Firefox and its settings remained at default with allowing webpages to chose their own font and the text looks normal on that computer. I also still have the problem in the Edge browser which leads me to think this is a problem with my system and not Firefox.

If you look at the screenshot, there is no some font or it is there, but only “Bold”. We should try to install it.

I do not see any Font issue, broken fonts, just that you have saved in a lossy compression format like JPG, add to that maybe ClearType tuning not adjusted, and you have changed the text size, possibly zoomed such that each letter has far fewer pixels exacerbating the problem.

I have enlarged both yours and mine to the pixel level to ascertain what is going on. There are around 3-4x more pixels in mine. Thus much less of a tendency to lose diagonal parts of text.

"This issue cannot be replicated".
It can, by badly adjusted ClearType and doing repeated JPG compressions and altering text size such that the letters have far fewer pixels.

"Browser doesn't seem to matter." That's a clue is it not ?
None of the other bulleted points are relevent apart from ClearType tuning.

This is my image a screen shot, snipping tool, from Edge default settings saved in PNG form.

Helmut said:

I do not see any Font issue, broken fonts, just that you have saved in a lossy compression format like JPG, add to that maybe ClearType tuning not adjusted, and you have changed the text size, possibly zoomed such that each letter has far fewer pixels exacerbating the problem.

I have enlarged both yours and mine to the pixel level to ascertain what is going on. There are around 3-4x more pixels in mine. Thus much less of a tendency to lose diagonal parts of text.

Click to expand...

The resolution of the jpg doesn't matter. The text looks different without screen capping it, and more difficult to read on my desktop than the laptop. The font on the desktop is a bold sans-serif and the more clear smaller text is a serif. I haven't changed any fonts myself and the screen caps weren't zoomed in either, I just grabbed a portion of the screen. Your example shows a serif font, why would there be different fonts for different computers viewing the same website?