UPDATE: thanks to the Rubber Duck effect, I just stumbled upon this note. It is a known problem: if you have Windows XP and either manually or with some "hack" managed to download the Windows Update of February 9th, 2015, Arial and Courier get screwed.

Windows Vista Users: the same applies, but since Vista is still supported, it happens automatically and always (unless you uninstall the KB3013455 update, and disable it from Windows Update before it self-reinstalls).

Original question

I have an older PC with XP Pro SP3 installed.

All of a sudden two fonts (at least), Arial and Courier New, started looking different. Arial is tolerable if a bit fuzzy; curves sprouted extra pixels, and some characters have enlarged elements (for example the horizontal bar of the 4 is two pixels tall, the bar from the 5 is one pixel only). Courier New has become pretty horrible, and seems to be actually missing whole horizontal scan lines.

The extra pixels would make one think of ClearType but those settings are correct (and unchanged since ages ago), and the usual voodoo of setting them to wrong values and then back to the correct ones avails nothing.

I checked several other questions and solutions that looked promising but nothing seems to work.

Thinking that the fonts had gotten damaged somehow (all others appear OK - I switched from Courier New to Consolas wherever possible) I replaced them with backup copies. Then I also reverted the system back to a configuration of one week ago, which was surely working. To no apparent effect.

Deleting the font cache (C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT) has it reappear somewhat smaller (as expected) on next reboot, but does not fix the problem.

The PC is otherwise working properly and all other fonts render as they always did; I managed to retrieve a screenshot of two months ago with some text in several fonts, and by rewriting the same words compared the two images, which are identical pixel per pixel (unfortunately the screenshot did not include either Arial or Courier New - but, to know that those two aren't OK, I need no test).

I'm really at a loss as to what could be causing this.

UPDATE: thanks to the Rubber Duck effect, I just stumbled upon this note. It is a known problem: if you have Windows XP and either manually or with some "hack" managed to download the Windows Update of February 9th, 2015, Arial and Courier get screwed.

Windows Vista Users: the same applies, but since Vista is still supported, it happens automatically and always (unless you uninstall the KB3013455 update, and disable it from Windows Update before it self-reinstalls).

Original question

I have an older PC with XP Pro SP3 installed.

All of a sudden two fonts (at least), Arial and Courier New, started looking different. Arial is tolerable if a bit fuzzy; curves sprouted extra pixels, and some characters have enlarged elements (for example the horizontal bar of the 4 is two pixels tall, the bar from the 5 is one pixel only). Courier New has become pretty horrible, and seems to be actually missing whole horizontal scan lines.

The extra pixels would make one think of ClearType but those settings are correct (and unchanged since ages ago), and the usual voodoo of setting them to wrong values and then back to the correct ones avails nothing.

I checked several other questions and solutions that looked promising but nothing seems to work.

Thinking that the fonts had gotten damaged somehow (all others appear OK - I switched from Courier New to Consolas wherever possible) I replaced them with backup copies. Then I also reverted the system back to a configuration of one week ago, which was surely working. To no apparent effect.

Deleting the font cache (C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT) has it reappear somewhat smaller (as expected) on next reboot, but does not fix the problem.

The PC is otherwise working properly and all other fonts render as they always did; I managed to retrieve a screenshot of two months ago with some text in several fonts, and by rewriting the same words compared the two images, which are identical pixel per pixel (unfortunately the screenshot did not include either Arial or Courier New - but, to know that those two aren't OK, I need no test).

I'm really at a loss as to what could be causing this.

UPDATE: thanks to the Rubber Duck effect, I just stumbled upon this note. It is a known problem: if you have Windows XP and either manually or with some "hack" managed to download the Windows Update of February 9th, 2015, Arial and Courier get screwed.

Original question

I have an older PC with XP Pro SP3 installed.

All of a sudden two fonts (at least), Arial and Courier New, started looking different. Arial is tolerable if a bit fuzzy; curves sprouted extra pixels, and some characters have enlarged elements (for example the horizontal bar of the 4 is two pixels tall, the bar from the 5 is one pixel only). Courier New has become pretty horrible, and seems to be actually missing whole horizontal scan lines.

The extra pixels would make one think of ClearType but those settings are correct (and unchanged since ages ago), and the usual voodoo of setting them to wrong values and then back to the correct ones avails nothing.

I checked several other questions and solutions that looked promising but nothing seems to work.

Thinking that the fonts had gotten damaged somehow (all others appear OK - I switched from Courier New to Consolas wherever possible) I replaced them with backup copies. Then I also reverted the system back to a configuration of one week ago, which was surely working. To no apparent effect.

Deleting the font cache (C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT) has it reappear somewhat smaller (as expected) on next reboot, but does not fix the problem.

The PC is otherwise working properly and all other fonts render as they always did; I managed to retrieve a screenshot of two months ago with some text in several fonts, and by rewriting the same words compared the two images, which are identical pixel per pixel (unfortunately the screenshot did not include either Arial or Courier New - but, to know that those two aren't OK, I need no test).

I'm really at a loss as to what could be causing this.

UPDATE: thanks to the Rubber Duck effect, I just stumbled upon this note. It is a known problem: if you have Windows XP and either manually or with some "hack" managed to download the Windows Update of February 9th, 2015, Arial and Courier get screwed.

Windows Vista Users: the same applies, but since Vista is still supported, it happens automatically and always (unless you uninstall the KB3013455 update, and disable it from Windows Update before it self-reinstalls).

Original question

I have an older PC with XP Pro SP3 installed.

All of a sudden two fonts (at least), Arial and Courier New, started looking different. Arial is tolerable if a bit fuzzy; curves sprouted extra pixels, and some characters have enlarged elements (for example the horizontal bar of the 4 is two pixels tall, the bar from the 5 is one pixel only). Courier New has become pretty horrible, and seems to be actually missing whole horizontal scan lines.

The extra pixels would make one think of ClearType but those settings are correct (and unchanged since ages ago), and the usual voodoo of setting them to wrong values and then back to the correct ones avails nothing.

I checked several other questions and solutions that looked promising but nothing seems to work.

Thinking that the fonts had gotten damaged somehow (all others appear OK - I switched from Courier New to Consolas wherever possible) I replaced them with backup copies. Then I also reverted the system back to a configuration of one week ago, which was surely working. To no apparent effect.

Deleting the font cache (C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT) has it reappear somewhat smaller (as expected) on next reboot, but does not fix the problem.

The PC is otherwise working properly and all other fonts render as they always did; I managed to retrieve a screenshot of two months ago with some text in several fonts, and by rewriting the same words compared the two images, which are identical pixel per pixel (unfortunately the screenshot did not include either Arial or Courier New - but, to know that those two aren't OK, I need no test).

I'm really at a loss as to what could be causing this.

UPDATE: thanks to the Rubber Duck effect, I just stumbled upon this note. It is a known problem.

I have an older PC with XP Pro SP3 installed.

All of a sudden two fonts (at least), Arial and Courier New, started looking different. Arial is tolerable if a bit fuzzy; curves sprouted extra pixels, and some characters have enlarged elements (for example the horizontal bar of the 4 is two pixels tall, the bar from the 5 is one pixel only). Courier New has become pretty horrible, and seems to be actually missing whole horizontal scan lines.

The extra pixels would make one think of ClearType but those settings are correct (and unchanged since ages ago), and the usual voodoo of setting them to wrong values and then back to the correct ones avails nothing.

I checked several other questions and solutions that looked promising but nothing seems to work.

Thinking that the fonts had gotten damaged somehow (all others appear OK - I switched from Courier New to Consolas wherever possible) I replaced them with backup copies. Then I also reverted the system back to a configuration of one week ago, which was surely working. To no apparent effect.

Deleting the font cache (C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT) has it reappear somewhat smaller (as expected) on next reboot, but does not fix the problem.

The PC is otherwise working properly and all other fonts render as they always did; I managed to retrieve a screenshot of two months ago with some text in several fonts, and by rewriting the same words compared the two images, which are identical pixel per pixel (unfortunately the screenshot did not include either Arial or Courier New - but, to know that those two aren't OK, I need no test).

I'm really at a loss as to what could be causing this.

UPDATE: thanks to the Rubber Duck effect, I just stumbled upon this note. It is a known problem: if you have Windows XP and either manually or with some "hack" managed to download the Windows Update of February 9th, 2015, Arial and Courier get screwed.

Original question

I have an older PC with XP Pro SP3 installed.

All of a sudden two fonts (at least), Arial and Courier New, started looking different. Arial is tolerable if a bit fuzzy; curves sprouted extra pixels, and some characters have enlarged elements (for example the horizontal bar of the 4 is two pixels tall, the bar from the 5 is one pixel only). Courier New has become pretty horrible, and seems to be actually missing whole horizontal scan lines.

The extra pixels would make one think of ClearType but those settings are correct (and unchanged since ages ago), and the usual voodoo of setting them to wrong values and then back to the correct ones avails nothing.

I checked several other questions and solutions that looked promising but nothing seems to work.

Thinking that the fonts had gotten damaged somehow (all others appear OK - I switched from Courier New to Consolas wherever possible) I replaced them with backup copies. Then I also reverted the system back to a configuration of one week ago, which was surely working. To no apparent effect.

Deleting the font cache (C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT) has it reappear somewhat smaller (as expected) on next reboot, but does not fix the problem.

The PC is otherwise working properly and all other fonts render as they always did; I managed to retrieve a screenshot of two months ago with some text in several fonts, and by rewriting the same words compared the two images, which are identical pixel per pixel (unfortunately the screenshot did not include either Arial or Courier New - but, to know that those two aren't OK, I need no test).

I'm really at a loss as to what could be causing this.