Folks:
Google Chrome on my Windows 7 machine has suddenly gone whacky with fonts. Almost everything in Gmail shows up in italics. A lot of stuff on various Web sites shows up as bold and italics. Microsoft Internet Explorer still works fine, so I don’t think that it is the machine.
My first thought was to play around with font substitution but I can’t find anything in the settings that is strange. Then I figured I would uninstall Google Chrome and reinstall it, but even on a freshly booted machine Windows says that it can’t uninstall the program until I “close all Chrome windows” (none had been opened subsequent to the reboot).
Any brilliant ideas from the community would be welcome!
Thanks,
Philip
A recent ‘upgrade’ on Chrome cuased it to use the Windows 125% scaling factor for all fonts, which was not the case previously (nor for IE). See: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=395425
This should have been fixed over the weekend – check for the latest update.
By default, Chrome allows itself to run in the background. Even with all Chrome windows closed, you will probably still find a Chrome icon in the tray (where the clock is). Right-clicking should reveal the option to not run in the background.
Here’s the full description:
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1184722?hl=en-GB
If all else fails, open task manager (Ctrl-Shift-Esc), go to the Processes tab, select “Show processes from all users” at the bottom, and then kill any Chrome.exe processes.
Hopefully you can then uninstall. During the uninstall you may be prompted to “Also delete your browsing data” — I’d say you probably want to do that as well, just to be sure (unless you’re afraid of losing any settings — but normally Chrome syncs all your preferences to the cloud anyway).
Oh, PS. If you’re running 64-bit Windows, I recommend the 64-bit build of Chrome (only released in the last couple of weeks). It is much faster and a lot more stable than the 32-bit version:
https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/?platform=win64
John: I did what you suggested and it all worked. I had to re-login to the browser once the 64-bit version was installed. But right away I could tell that it was still stuck on italics. Even my Gmail username typed into the login box was rendered in italics as I typed it.
Maybe it is a bug with your video driver. They only just released DirectWrite support (replacing OpenGL), so you may find that disabling DirectWrite fixes the problem.
Open a new tab, paste chrome://flags into the address bar, scroll down to find Disable DirectWrite” and click enable (double-negative?).
In the long term you do want DirectWrite though, so don’t forget to turn this back off once you are running a later build of Chrome.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/y2MzOvK1_Q4%5B1-25-true%5D
Sorry for all the PSs. It doesn’t look too good, based on this Chrome Bug report page:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=408393
I would check for the latest video drivers for your machine (the easiest way is to check under optional updates in Windows Update).
Always happy to help offline if you want.
Is it possible that your default font (presumably Arial) was corrupted or moved? i.e. is it specific to a particular font (page with multiple fonts: http://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/fonts.html ) or is it all fonts?
Other option, install the European Font update, per Stackoverflow: http://superuser.com/a/614469
Apparently this is some sort of Windows font problem – you are not the first to experience this according to Google. Why it affects only Chrome – I dunno.
A recommended solution (worth trying – seems harmless at worst):
Use the Start Menu, goto Control Panel then Fonts. This opens up the font directory. Then double click the Arial.ttf file. Also do this for Lucida Sans and Roboto. Close them and re-open Chrome.
Another thought – if you haven’t installed a lot of software in the interim, do a Windows “restore my computer to an earlier date” (system restore) to a date before the date that this problem started. System restore does not delete your data files – it just reverts software and settings.
Another thought – if you haven’t installed a lot of software in the interim, do a Windows “restore my computer to an earlier date” (system restore) to a date before the date that this problem started.
I tried pretty much everything, except for Izzie’s Big Hammer System Restore idea (the only thing that MSFT says has been installed are some security updates). So I’ve switched to Firefox.
System restore is really not that big a hammer. It usually leaves your data alone and only rolls back software changes (at least it is supposed to). And you can usually undo the restore (not to mention that you have back ups, I hope). So there’s not that much to lose in trying it and it usually only takes a few minutes. Chrome is a good browser and it would be a shame to lose it.
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=408393
Comment #31.
Comments #47,48, 57 say it works.
Another solution is comment #42 on the same thread.
Comments #50, 56 say that works.
Seems like it has to do with the NewsPaperDirect fonts.
Go Avni! Thanks! That was the fix. I installed the NewsPaperDirect patch (nothing like running code on one’s PC from a company that one has never heard of). I wonder how NewsPaperDirect even got on my PC. I don’t remember ever installing it. Could HP have bundled it with Windows? The folder dates back to October 2010 which I think is roughly when the PC was purchased. There is also some other crud there such as Norton Internet Security and “Kobo”.
Newspaper Direct is the program that allows you to view replica editions of the New York Times and other publications. Rather than looking like web pages, publications viewed on Newspaper Direct appear exactly like the print versions.
Oh, and Kobo is a e-book platform, like Nook or Kindle.
I was having the same problem and tried Avni’s solution. This also worked for me. I had done a system restore that fixed it until everything updated again.