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I have a problem with font antialiasing on a Windows XP PC. Example image (top half bad vs bottom half good taken on another XP box):

enter image description here

I'm using normal antialiasing (I don't like ClearType).

What could be causing this?

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    Those look the same on my screen. Perhaps it's a difference in your monitors? (Though the bottom one looks a bit "bolder", I don't see any difference in the anti-aliasing between the two images... actually the bottom half just looks like ClearType to me)
    – Billy ONeal
    Commented Sep 1, 2011 at 4:14
  • Take another screenshot, and scale them by 400% using nearest neighbour interpolation. Since text on both looks the same (i.e. no "corruption") it's difficult to advise further.
    – Ian Boyd
    Commented Apr 17, 2012 at 0:07

4 Answers 4

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If this only happens in IE and not your desktop, IE may still be using ClearType. There is a setting under Internet Options | Advanced tab | Multimedia | "Always use ClearType for HTML*".

This setting also affects HTML emails in Outlook.

I'm one of the lucky people that can't stand the ClearType and strive to turn it off. However, you can also tweak how ClearType works using this site and ClearType Tuner PowerToy. (After tweaking I can make it acceptable for my eyes, but I hate doing that for every system I touch.)

I hope these tweaks help.

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  • Nope, screenshot is from Firefox, but it happens everywhere. It's not cleartype, it's the right type of antialiasing, it just looks corrupted.
    – Matteo Riva
    Commented Jan 11, 2010 at 8:34
  • @kemp, so is this something new, or do you just not like regular Windows' anti-aliasing (I know I don't, so I don't see what the big deal is).
    – Anonymous
    Commented Jan 11, 2010 at 15:07
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If this is happening everywhere, not just web browsers, you probably have ClearType enabled for all font rendering. To disable in in XP (where '>' means to click the menu item, tab, or button):

Start > Control Panels > Display > Appearance > Effects > uncheck "Smooth edges of screen fonts"

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Both renderings use standard font smoothing, however the lower one is a bit bolder. This might be related to a color profile of the monitor (Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Color Management).

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If like me you want to fully get rid of Cleartype, you may know it's quite a pain.
I didn't install a Windows 7/10 recently, but Google has good results about it now.
Here's an example.


More recently, I had to look for a way of removing not only Font smoothing in Windows, but also in browsers (couldn't even use GMail since their last update).

Here's my savior :


Disabling blurry web fonts for Chrome and Firefox :
Source : http://annystudio.com/misc/anti-aliased-fonts-hurt/

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Mozilla Firefox :

Open by typing about:config in the address bar.
Set gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled to false.

You can also replace all the fonts with the font of your choice by going to Tools – Options – Content.

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Google Chrome

Right click Chrome’s launcher icon, choose Properties. At the end of the launcher string add --disable-remote-fonts

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