Patch Tuesday: Font Corruption Fix is Ready

Among the litany of issues with February's Patch Tuesday, one Microsoft supplied update caused fonts to display fuzzy, and in some cases they were unreadable. Imagine those trying desperately to follow the rules by migrating off Windows Server 2003 by the July deadline, but unable to read the screen.

KB3013455 was the offending update this month that caused font corruption for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. It also affected Windows XP computers, though, that was only observed by those companies part of the Custom Support program. Support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014, but many companies went ahead and purchased extended support agreements because they were not ready to migrate to a newer desktop Windows operating system. If this had just been a Windows XP problem, we could just ignore the complaints. But, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008 are still supported – for now. And, it's evident that, since only older operating systems were affected by the update, there's been a change in the font subsystem somewhere along the line.

A fix is now available for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 customers. Normally, when Microsoft releases a fix for an update, the company will unpublish the original update and then release a new one. In the case of this font repair, Microsoft has chosen to leave the original alone but supply a smaller patch that simply fixes fonts. So, if you have computers affected by the flub, just download the patch and apply it – no need to uninstall the original.

It was recommended to avoid the font corruption update early on and some of you did that. The patch is actually a pretty important security update, so if you delayed installing it, you'll want to go ahead and approve the installation of KB3013455 and then apply this latest fix right after.

The fix can be obtained from here: Fix for text quality degradation after security update 3013455 (MS15-010) is installed

It's available for Windows Vista, Windows Vista for x64-based Systems, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems.