Weird fonts on installation of R2 SP1 (build number 2015.10.2.2215)

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

My free copy of Avast requested to update to this version and immediately upon restarting (and it’s persisted with restarts) the fonts in my browser (Firefox) and all fonts across Office 2013 are messed up. To clarify, they appear thin, smaller, and vaguely distorted. Does Avast interfere with Windows’ display interface, or what gives? This is really annoying.

Testing… Start menu and icon fonts appear to be fine, notepad, I.E. I’m guessing perhaps apps which use certain display tools are affected? I recall this happening a few years ago, but I never found a solution.

Happy to supply system information/log files in private to a rep if I can get this sorted. Thanks.

Not sure how visible it is in the attached screenshot, but I tried to supply an example.

2

A second screenshot, perhaps it’s clearer what I mean

3

Has your screen resolution changed?

4

No.

5

Interesting. The only time I’ve seen something similar was when an LCD was displaying something outside of its native range.
Which OS?

Have you tried uninstalling completely to see if it fixes it ?

Here’s a method of reinstalling the fonts and registry entries.
http://superuser.com/questions/695635/windows-8-1-missing-font-files-after-restart

The other thing is, make sure the PC is malware-free. Sometimes font issues can be virus related.

6

I was hoping to avoid significant scans etc. I’m at uni with two major assignments due, I kinda rely on this laptop =/ I was planning to completely remove and reinstall Avast when I arrived home today, though… I’ll give all of the above a shot and report back. Thanks for the link!

7

Alright, I’ve tried:
Uninstalling and reinstalling Avast (additionally, using the avastclean uninstaller instead of add/remove… I just figured it would do a more thorough job.)
Full scan with MalwareBytes
sfc /scannow
chkdsk /f
Using Autoruns to disable all startup items
(While startups were disabled) I followed the instructions to repair font installation from the above link.
I did this twice, once rebooting straight to regular Windows, and again into safe mode first.
Doing this, I realised that the font/UI weirdness doesn’t occur in safe mode. …But it does still occur now.

Maybe it is malware, I have no idea, I’ll try Combofix to be sure.

Edit: Combofix produced nothing and the log file looks fine… I googled anything unfamiliar. Here’s another screenshot to illuminate the weird UI distortions, besides the text.

I just tried to open my graphics control panel(s) upon noticing their icons were missing from my system tray (I have dual onboard GPUs) and neither would open… =/ Apparently “a device attached to the system is not functioning.” System restore time, perhaps.

8

I would say since there is no evidence of malware before or after this problem,
give the system restore a try.

If still not resolved open an incident in the virus and worms forum, and some of the malware
experts can look a little deeper.
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=4.0