Computer question of distorted text in Windows 7

Factual Questions
1

I consider myself very computer literate but this problem has flummoxed me.

Screenprint:

http://www.johnsonpropertysolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/image-distortion.png

See how the text becomes screwy after the first sentence and then gets better again?

If I hit ctrl-a and select the entire screen, then deselect, it becomes normal again. But I scroll down and it does it again.

I have the latest graphics drivers for this laptop.

Any ideas?

Toshiba Satellite L675D-S7053
Windows 7 SP1

2

It appears to only happen in Firefox 27.0.1 and renders correctly in both Chrome and IE

3

Ugh. Google is my friend. It didn’t help until I realized, after posting the OP, that it was a Firefox specific problem.

(ETA Almost) Solved:

Try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

ETA: It’s way better for sure, but there are still traces of distorted text. My “w” is still weird.

4

Dammit.

I feel like a tool, replying to my own post three times now…

As I continue to research, I discover new evidence:

http://www.johnsonpropertysolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/second-distorted-text-image-1024x236.png

I still have the problem, though less pronounced.

See second paragraph above

5

I am not sure what we are supposed to be looking at here. I do not see anything obviously “distorted” in your PNG image, although some of the black text does look a bit blotchy. The latter problem may be a result of sub-optimal Clear Type settings, which you could easily fix for yourself in Control Panel.

6

Thanks njtt, it does appear to be a function of Clear Type and I can correct it using the “adjust Clear Type text” function.

It still goes a bit screwy when I adjust text size using ctrl-+ or ctrl --.

And I don’t understand why it only happens in Firefox.

7

I have successfully recreated the issue in IE but not Chrome.

I think Chrome might just skip over the scales that can’t render correctly on my screen.

njtt, if you look at the screenshots I posted, then zoom in with ctrl+ you should see the distorted text and weird colors introduced.

I alter the scale often on various webpages due to my failing eyesight, and some of them go wonky.

I just wish I could solve it for all browsers and scales/resolutions.

8

Oh well. Thanks anyway.

9

When you do, it is actually more helpful to the rest of us. I wish more people would follow up with their solutions and trouble shooting procedures.

10

I was going to suggest that it was ClearType related, too. Have you gone through the tuning mechanism? It will show you a bunch of different samples of text, asking you which ones look better.