Blurry text (and other display quirks) after a clean install

Clairvaux · 15 Oct 2015

After a clean reinstall by sysprepping along the lines of this tutorial, there are a few instances where some parts of my screen are displayed in a fuzzy manner. Fonts look out of focus, the way they do in a screen grab. The rest of the screen is correct.

Here are two examples :

Blurry text (and other display quirks) after a clean install-capture-1.png

Blurry text (and other display quirks) after a clean install-capture-2.png

This happens in a small number of dialog boxes of software installers (example #1), but also with the working screen of Driver View, portable version (example #2). Note how the top line of Driver View's screen is rendered correctly.

I suspect either a bad driver or a bad Windows Update. I had some trouble with the latter : Checking Updates getting nowhere, Installing Updates taking ages for a single update, computer forcefully stopped during one install, error not repaired by Microsoft Fixit, Updates uninstalled then reinstalled...

Now my Windows Updates are (seemingly) complete and correct. The computer is just out of Sysprep, with only Windows installed, two user accounts, most drivers in place, almost no application software and data not yet restored.

Windows Update substituted some drivers after I had installed the chipset drivers from Asus' site. During the installation of drivers and Windows Updates, I observed, at one point, the opposite effect from the one I just described : some software installers' dialog boxes would display in-focus fonts, but with a very light, rudimentary font, difficult to read.

On the other hand, the general appearance of Windows has been noticeably enhanced, compared to my previous installation. The fonts are more crispy, the GUI itself seems to have a different, more pleasant look. The graphic driver now installed is an update to the one I had before, but it's not the latest.

Any ideas ?

ThrashZone · 16 Oct 2015

Hi,
You're missing quite a few Visual C++ listings 2010-2012-2013 :/

Clairvaux · 16 Oct 2015

Do you mean it might be the cause of those fuzzy displays ?

In the meantime, I tried to upgrade to what is available on AMD's website as the "legacy driver" for my no-longer-supported Radeon HD 4290 integrated graphic chip, and which is actually a bunch of different things on top of the display driver by itself.

I now have Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x64 Redistributable 10.0.30319 installed, with the 2008 version as well (is it normal that both are installed side by side ?). This does not solve the problem. (I opted out of the Catalyst Software Suite. This could not cause the display to disfunction, could it ?)

At some point in the re-install process, I installed from AMD's website what is advertised as the latest "chipset driver" for AMD motherboards (published on July 29, 2015). I think it had Visual C++ 2012 in it. I'm not sure about 2013. This has been reversed now.

I still have those "chipset drivers" at hand, though, and could give them a try. I also have a different, older set of "chipset drivers" from the Asus website, which Asus implies are the most up-to-date for my motherboard (quotation marks again, because this seems to be a very elastic notion). And I also have the original set of "chipset drivers" which came with my motherboard, were installed back in 2010 and did not produce this display bug.

I don't think this is relevant, but just in case : since I don't do games and I don't overclock, I chose to not install, this time, some bits that are on my motherboard's DVD and that Asus calls AMD Overdrive, Asus Turbo V and Asus GPU Boost Driver. I also did a BIOS upgrade in the past, which seemed to work fine before re-install.

ThrashZone · 16 Oct 2015

Hi,
Yep very normal although I have never had a AMD system
Attachment 373750
I really did not notice any fussiness :/

You would actually have to take a picture with a camera to get around a display issue like that.

Clairvaux · 16 Oct 2015

Thanks. So I understand it's normal to have several versions of Visual C++ installed.

I'm not sure I get your point about fuzziness, however. Do you mean you don't see anything wrong in the screens I have uploaded ?

I have just come across another display problem : comment boxes on blogs just showing a very crude font, nothing like normal. Plus : on one blog, after the comment gets more than a few lines long, the box gets filled with horizontal lines. They disappear when you type into them. Very weird. This, on blogs that I'm very familiar with, so there's definitely something wrong.

Callender · 16 Oct 2015

Graphics card drivers aside - have you tried cleartype text tuner. I always run that on any machine that I use.

ClearType Text Tuner

EDIT:

Also a quick note to say that personally if I need drivers after a fresh install I either grab them from the computer manufacturer's website or else get them from the cloned copy of the drive that I made before a fresh install.

Clairvaux · 17 Oct 2015

Thank you, Callender. Yes, I have applied Clear Type, but the display aberration is way beyond what Clear Type is supposed to do (which is really fine-tuning). Click on the screen grabs to see how bad they are.

If anyone can point me to a relevant tutorial about drivers, or if it is more appropriate that I post this issue on a more specialized thread, please tell me.

cyclops · 17 Oct 2015

Clairvaux, I am experiencing the same thing. I have no idea what triggered it or exactly when it started. With my poor eyesight I probably didn't notice it until your post. I am looking forward to seeing the cause and solution. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

cyclops · 17 Oct 2015

Clairvaux, I just went into display properties and switched to the default Windows Aero theme and all appears normal. I'm leaving it that way for now.

ThrashZone · 17 Oct 2015

Most complaints I've read about font scaling... have been AMD systems cpu and gpu.