Screen Fonts

[Norman Risch]

I recently wiped my computer clean, and installed Win XP Pro with SP-1.
I got all of the updates from Windows Update.

Somewhere along the line, the default fonts for quite a number of
programs changed from Times Roman (or others) to italics. Its not just
one program: Netscape, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, and WordPad (but NOT
NotePad - go figure). NONE of the program indicate that Italics is
turned on. Clicking on, or selecting the Italics font, does NOTHING. It
neither turns it on or off.

Ordinary login screens, and the like are okay. It's just these word
processors and their close relatives.

Does anyone know what setting controls this? It has to be something
common to Windows to affect so many programs.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Malke]

I recently wiped my computer clean, and installed Win XP Pro with
SP-1. I got all of the updates from Windows Update.

Somewhere along the line, the default fonts for quite a number of
programs changed from Times Roman (or others) to italics. Its not just
one program: Netscape, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, and WordPad (but
NOT NotePad - go figure). NONE of the program indicate that Italics is
turned on. Clicking on, or selecting the Italics font, does NOTHING.
It neither turns it on or off.

Ordinary login screens, and the like are okay. It's just these word
processors and their close relatives.

Does anyone know what setting controls this? It has to be something
common to Windows to affect so many programs.

Here are my notes about this problem:

When a rogue program decides to install its own version of system fonts,
it may replace the original version of the font file with a shortcut in
the font folder. Once this program is uninstalled, the shortcut may
now point to a font file that no longer exists. Windows XP in turn
reacts by turning all unspecified fonts into italics upon next reboot.
The simple way to fix this is to delete all shortcuts in the font
folder and replace them with the actual font file. By going to
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Fonts],
you can also double check the path of each font and look for any
suspicious paths.

Be careful in the registry. If you are uncomfortable working with your
machine like this, call a good local computer repair person.

Good luck,

Malke