Help! Video driver upgrade messed up my fonts/icons!

[Accessdabbler]

I went to the Windows Update website and saw that there was a new driver for my video card. So, I installed it.

But, as a result of the upgrade, my desktop fonts and icons changed. I've tried changing my Desktop Scheme to Windows Standard (Win2000) but it's not working properly.

This has happened to me in the past and I've ended up reinstalling the OS but I'd rather not do that!

I've noticed that the font used seems to be Tahoma when the Windows Standard font is usually MS Sans Serif. For some reason, Windows thinks my default font should be Tahoma.

I've been able to manually fix most of the icon and font problems except for one.

The text size showed in programs such as Eudora and IE is still too small. I believe the reason is that the font is still Tahoma. How do I fix this? I can't seem to find where Windows picks the font that is used inside an application window.

 

[TSSTechie]

Howdy,

Try to uninstall the drivers. I had a similar problem with graphics drivers from Windows Update, completely screwed my display up. See if you can uninstall the drivers through add/remove programs, then go to your graphics card manufacturers website and download their drivers for your card.

Hope this helps

TSSTechie

May The Force Be With You

 

[Accessdabbler]

I did try removing the hardware and reinstalling it but to no avail. Still messed up.

 

[bcastner]

See the second question and answer here:

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/DrIntl/columns/017/default.mspx

Try setting your desktop to Classic.

 

[Accessdabbler]

I've tried that but I still can't seem to get a larger font in IE, Eudora and other programs. I can increase the size of the font being used but it's not the same font that comes with a default Win2000 installation. I'm really baffled why my Window Text font is too small/wrong font.

 

[bcastner]

The sanest thing then would be to go to the OEM manufacturer's web site and replace the downloaded Microsoft driver. I have a real issue with device drivers from Windows Update and just refuse them. (And do not fix things that are not broken). XP has a nice feature called "Drive rollback" which unfortunately cannot help you in this case.

Go to the video board's manufacturer site and redo the driver upgrade.

 

[bcastner]

XP has a nice feature called "Drive rollback" which unfortunately cannot help you in this case."

I hope it was clear I intended this to read:

"XP has a nice feature called "Driver rollback" which unfortunately cannot help you in this case."

 

[Accessdabbler]

Yes, I did get the latest driver and installed it but it didn't fix the font problem. It's almost if the driver installation caused a change in the Win2000 registry resulting in changing a setting by adding 1 (for example) instead of replacing a value.

I've had this happen in the past before and have always resorted to a full re-install of the OS. Now that I'm older and smarter, I was hoping to avoid it this time.

 

[bcastner]

Open Regedit and navigate to the following key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics]

In the right-pane, double-click Shell Icon BPP and set it's value to 16
Close Registry Editor.
You will need to restart Windows for the changes to take effect. If that does not help, or to apply the change instantly, try this:

1. Right-click Desktop, choose Properties, Appearance Tab.
2. Click Advanced button, choose Icon from the drop-down list
3. Set it's size to 31 and press OK, OK
Now, very imporant:
Repeat the steps (1-3) and set the Icon size to 32

Reboot and test.

The strange things in my second paragraph of advice is exactly what the Microsoft TweakUI uses as its approach. This forces the OS to rebuild the icon cache and default settings.

 

[Accessdabbler]

Hmm, well I've tried both of those suggestions and still no luck. I've compared the Appearance settings on my computer with another one running Win2K and everything is the same.

I still can't seem to get the font size used in IE (and all my other apps) to be the default larger version (yes, my adapter is set to Large Fonts). The only way I can increase the font size in IE is to go to View > Text Size > Larger (or Largest). This does increase the font size but it looks unusually large and as though its a different font.

In my Simply Accounting program, the default font is now a slightly italicized font. Whatever is going on, this font problem has got me stumped.

 

[bcastner]

http://www.kayskreations.net/fonts/fonttb.html

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1009691

 

[Accessdabbler]

Well, I located the original installation disk for my video card and did a complete uninstall of the drivers and went back to the original drivers.

This worked!

The problem was from the new drivers. It looks like the newest driver has some problem with the "Large Fonts" setting. I have not seen anything posted on the ATI website about this yet but I doubt I was the only customer affected.

My fonts are back to normal size and the only complaint I have is that the icons in my system tray are kind of "blotchy". I can live with this (but I'll still try and figure out why ther're blotchy!).

 

[bcastner]

1. Right-click Desktop, choose Properties, Appearance Tab.
2. Click Advanced button, choose Icon from the drop-down list
3. Set it's size to 31 and press OK, OK
Now, very imporant:
Repeat the steps (1-3) and set the Icon size to 32

Reboot and test.

 

[Accessdabbler]

Thanks, you suggested that earlier and I just tried it again but still no change. The icons on my desktop appear to have been re-written (they disappeared then re-appeared) but they were already fine. So they didn't appear to change but the system tray icons remain "blocky". I think the problem is that they are 1 or 2 sizes too large.

 

[Accessdabbler]

Just a "final" followup to this thread:

I contacted ATI about my font/icon problem. They sent me an email with a link to a utility that uninstalls ALL ATI files. I ran the software and upon restart, I installed the latest ATI driver for my card.

After another restart all my fonts are working and displaying properly!

However, there were some problems with sizes of captions buttons and menu border sizes and my system tray icons were still "blocky" or corrupted.

So, I went into the APPEARANCE settings and changed to "Windows Standard". This didn't do anything. I manually looked at each setting and changed them to the sizes that they should be (size 22 fonts, etc.). All menus and fonts are now appearing properly!

Finally, I opened each program that has an option to display a system tray icon and set the icon to "hide". Without restarting, I turned the system tray icon back on and voila! the system tray icons displays normally!

Whew! Thanks for your help.