Forum Discussion
Weird font and personalization issues after september update
Since the Windows September update, our company laptops have been experiencing numerous issues.
It starts with all desktop customizations being reset, and changes are lost with every restart. The desktop background keeps reverting to a solid black color, the keyboard switches to an English layout, and taskbar settings are lost.
The issue with the black background is reportedly a known problem following the August update (KB5120998). However, this issue was supposed to have been fixed with the September update. The affected PCs have build version 26200.9550 or 26200.9457 installed. The KB5124010 update is also reported to cause a black background in some cases, though this is said to be due to a crashed explorer.exe process. The explorer.exe process runs flawlessly on our PCs. We also installed the KB5124010 rollback for this known issue as a test, but it did not make any difference.
The worst part, however, is the font, which in most applications looks as if the resolution is incorrect. Strangely enough, the font appears completely normal in some applications, such as Windows Settings. The screenshots show both the incorrect and the correct fonts. The incorrect one looks as if the text were poorly printed and then scanned back in. It’s terrible.
I've read about the issues with the background image and personalization, but it seems like no one else is having this font problem?
Unfortunately, uninstalling the update didn't solve the problem.
Enabling ClearType doesn't fix the problem either, and the setting resets after a restart.
Otherwise, I’ve tried: sfc /scannow, dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth, installing KIR, clearing the font cache, and restarting the font service.
At this point, I don’t know what else to do, and I’m worried that the problem won’t be fixed by an upcoming Windows update, since it doesn’t seem to be a known issue.
6 Replies
Hey we got the same issues!!!!
Windows 11 25H2: Display language reverts to English and system font is degraded after a cumulative update, here is how I fixed it
After installing the cumulative updates on Windows 11 25H2 (build 26200.9457or 26200.9711 , several machines in our fleet hit the same issue. On standard user accounts only, the display language and keyboard layout switched back to English, the region changed to "World", and the system font was degraded across all applications. French was still listed under the language settings, but without the "language pack" label. Recreating the user profile only fixed it for a few days.
Here is what I did, in this order:
I reinstalled the French language pack (fr-FR) using the files extracted from the Windows 11 25H2 "Languages and Optional Features" ISO.
I restored the user's language settings to French from their own account: display language, language list, keyboard, regional format, and France as the region.
I cleared the font cache from an administrator account. I stopped the Windows Font Cache service, deleted the file C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT and the contents of the folder C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache, then restarted the service.
I rebooted the machine.
After the reboot, the language, keyboard, and font were back to normal. Hope this helps anyone running into the same problem.
Hope that this will help you :)
Hello,
do you have a solution for this problem?
Unfortunately not yet. At the moment, our best approach is reseting the affected devices and clean-installing the newest version of windows.
Do you experience the same issue?
The fact that administrators are unaffected changes the diagnosis. This is more likely a per-user profile, policy, or profile-container problem than damaged system fonts or the display driver. The black background, keyboard layout, taskbar preferences, and ClearType state all reverting after restart are separate user settings; losing all of them together suggests the user hive is not being saved or the user is receiving a temporary/mandatory profile.
On an affected machine, check Event Viewer > Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > User Profile Service > Operational immediately after sign-in. Look for profile load/save errors and events indicating a temporary profile. Run gpresult /h "%PUBLIC%\gp.html" as the affected user and compare the applied user policies with an administrator and with a newly created standard test user.
If the new standard user keeps its settings, preserve the affected user's files and have IT repair or recreate that profile through the organization's supported profile process. If every standard user is affected, inspect user-targeted Group Policy, Intune configuration, FSLogix/profile-container permissions if used, and any sign-in script that restores a baseline. Uninstalling display updates or rebuilding the machine will not fix a policy that reapplies the same user state at every logon.
Here are the Screenshots.
Also we have found out, that the problem seems to only occur to normal users but not to admin users.Hello,
Do you have a solution?
Thanks
