Some text appears blurry, clears up if mouseover

bpadlows · 03 Apr 2013

This problem started about 3 weeks ago. Every now & then (about half the time on PC) the text on the screen appears to be fuzzy or blurry, almost washed-out as if it were waterbased ink in the rain (see attached screen grab); it almost looks washed-out or sometimes grayed out. If I mouseover and highlight the blurry text and then click outside the selected, fuzzy-text area (de-select the text) or scroll up & down, the font then goes back to normal for a little while (returns very soon). This happens when browsing (via Firefox), in wordpad, Word, Excel, and even the names of desktop icons and when typing in a blog- like this one, text in news articles, captions of photos, etc. are blurry. Note that only the text, never any image, is blurry. Monitor is a Hannspree 23.5" LCD, card is ATI Radeon H 4250, OS is Win 7 Ult 64 bit, 8G RAM, AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.80 GHz. PC is homebuilt but has been running perfectly for over a year. I have made no system changes, and have not downloaded any software recently. The entire screen does not show blurry text, usually just a section of it, say 10-20% but in the same area. I read on some blogs where they suggested it could be caused by using the VGA out put into a digital monitor (as mine was ALWAYS set up) so I swapped out the VGA cable for a DVI cable. Same issue. I tried every single resolution choice on the display, still the same. I reinstalled the video card's driver, downloading it from ATI. Still the same. I unchecked "Soften edges of fonts", still the same.

Lastly, I swapped out the monitor for another LCD monitor ("Generic PnP monitor", 15" of unknown make) but STILL have the same problem. Virus scan via Avast 8 finds nothing. It's very difficult to use the PC now, as the text is often unreadable.

I have attached a screen grab of the very window I was typing in on this forum when suddenly I got the fuzzy text symptom.

Anyone have any ideas? This is driving me nuts!

nilank · 03 Apr 2013

Click Start

> Type "cleartype" [without quotes] and hit Enter

Check "Turn on ClearType" and click Next:

Some text appears blurry, clears up if mouseover-capture.jpg

Click the box that looks best to you and keep doing this (4 times) and ultimately click Finish at the end.

Now how's the text everywhere?

bpadlows · 03 Apr 2013

Thanks. Although I will give Cleartext a whirl tonight, I'm not hopeful since only portions of the screen show unreadable, washed-out text (almost as though it was washed away). Much of the screen's text is quite sharp.

fellowes · 03 Apr 2013

nilank said:

Click Start

> Type "cleartype" [without quotes] and hit Enter

Check "Turn on ClearType" and click Next:

Click the box that looks best to you and keep doing this (4 times) and ultimately click Finish at the end.

Now how's the text everywhere?

I'm having the same problem in my PC.

I reinstall windows in a different HDD, maintaining the original HDD in D:, and the problem persist. I try to setup clear type and deactivate, and still having problems.

Now i'm scanning (virus?) my HDD with MSE, but because of the amount of storage, it takes hours and hours.

EDIT: Reading again the first post, I notice some coincidences with bpadlows.
I start with this problems a few weeks ago like him, and i have the same Graphic card (HD 4250) not sure if this is relevant.

bpadlows · 03 Apr 2013

I implemented Cleartext and, as I feared, it had no effect. Here is an example of blurred, washed-out text AFTER turning Cleartext on (attached). The "Laura Brannigan" text is AFTER implementing Cleartext. The other is an example of a bad smearing of text.

So, anyone have any ideas? This is getting to be a real issue, as often the text is not readable at all (this latest example is mild- often it is impossible to read).

Britton30 · 03 Apr 2013

I have the same issue but only when scrolling text on a web page. I had a thread much earlier but no one came up with any help. I'll check back and see if there is something new. I also have clear type "on".

bpadlows · 03 Apr 2013

This is very frustrating! I have read dozns of blogs on this topic, but no one has yet offered a working solution. And then there are the twits who reported the problem, and finally say "I fixed it" or "The problem is resolved" without saying HOW they fixed it. Doh!

Britton30 · 03 Apr 2013

For me, I did a fresh install for other reasons and the buggy text is still there.

nilank · 03 Apr 2013

Something to do with graphics drivers maybe?

Britton30 · 04 Apr 2013

nilank said:

Something to do with graphics drivers maybe?

no, in my case the problem remained through 3 driver updates.