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Windows Font Weirdness

I left my hand on on shift key too long on my windows box and trigger some kind of accessibility feature . I tried to turn it off and since then, my fonts have been whacky - the text in the titlebars is larger and the kerning is all squished, and the actual titlebars are shorter than before. This has bled into the bold font for unread items in Thunderbird as well - most annoying.

How do I fix it?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Posted September 3rd, 2005 @ 11:36 AM

12 Replies

Jalada adds this Comment:

It’s bound to be under Control Panel|Accessibility, as holding shift for 5 seconds or so is a shortcut for activating part of it. I’m not sure what it is exactly though, but it’s going to be set up there somewhere (I’m on Linux so I’m not sure). Hope that helps. Microsoft’s Accessibility page is: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/

September 3rd, 2005 at 2:19 pm
Alex adds this Comment:

I checked all the options in there - the only font setting is set to “normal size”.

Another strange symptom, instead of links from external applications in new tabs, Firefox is now opening them in new windows.

September 3rd, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Martey adds this Comment:

Since shift-clicking in Firefox will open new windows, is it possible that either Windows thinks your Shift key is stuck down, or your Shift key has actually become stuck hardware-wise? Have you tried restarting or lifting up the Shift key?

September 3rd, 2005 at 5:28 pm
Phil Boardman adds this Comment:

I don’t know about holding shift for 5 seconds, but pressing shift 5 times in a row turns on ’sticky keys’, which locks down alt, ctrl and shift until you press another key. I don’t know how this could be producing these results.
I’m on a mac so I can’t give any more info.

September 3rd, 2005 at 5:43 pm
Alex adds this Comment:

Oh yes - I’ve rebooted, that’s my #1 fix for any Windoze related problem.

September 3rd, 2005 at 7:42 pm
matt adds this Comment:

Have you gone into control panel and then Accessibility Options to see if anything appears turned on that shouldn’t be? I also found something in there where you can “Turn off accessibility features if idle for x minutes”. You might be able to check that, turn it down to something low and just let windows idle for a minute or two.

It’s under the General Tab.

While in there you also might want to make sure the checkbox is checked for “Give warning message when turning a feature on”. Not sure if that will give you a confirm box or not, but might help in preventing it again.

Anyhow, let us know if you figure it out, I’d be interested in knowing in case I encounter it.

September 3rd, 2005 at 10:37 pm
Martey adds this Comment:

In the interests of science (and because I have encountered this problem myself, and I had forgotten how I solved it), I held down my own Shift key for too long. Afterwards, even though the Shift key was not being pressed, all clicks in Firefox opened in a new window. I was able to stop this by turning StickyKeys (see “Keyboard” tab of the “Accessibility Options” Control Panel applet) on and off.

September 4th, 2005 at 1:47 am
Jalada adds this Comment:

Or even just turn off the hotkeys for them. I have no idea why Microsoft feels these things should be on by default.

September 4th, 2005 at 2:57 am
Christian adds this Comment:

Maybe it’s your graphic card driver running amok?

Right click on your desktop and select Properties*. On the Display Properties window, select the Designs tab and choose Windows XP from the drop down menu. Then click Apply. This should reset your display properties.

If it doesn’t help, select the Settings tab and click the - uhm - Advanced(?) button. There, on the General tab, in the Display section, select Normal (96 DPI) and click Apply.

hth
Christian

*) By the way: I’m using the German edition of WinXP, so all commands I list are rough translations. Microsoft might use different vocabulary in their actual English software.

September 4th, 2005 at 3:22 am
stephanie adds this Comment:

It’s probably the high contrast setting under accessibility. open up access in control panel and go to the display tab and if high contrast is checked uncheck it. This setting makes some of your text huge. I know this is what happened to mine and i was having the same problems you are having.

Steph

September 10th, 2005 at 5:53 pm
Alex adds this Comment:

Wow, that seems to have been it. The option wasn’t checked when I went in so I turned it on, selected the standard scheme and hit apply, then turned it back off again. After about a minute of looking realy weird - it snapped back to “normal”. Thank you!

September 11th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
peter adds this Comment:

thanks i had the same problem with holding down the shift key to long and could not repeat key strokes. from reading this blog i was able to fix it thanks for help

peter

April 5th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

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