Why do all my browsers default to the "Impact" font?

I've been struggling with a font issue which I hope you can help resolve. A few weeks ago I started seeing "Impact" as the default font on lots of webpages, rendering much of the content illegible.

I think this issue began after I installed other fonts, but I'm not sure. The issue occurs on Chrome, IE and Firefox which suggests it is a Windows issue. By the time I tried to revert the changes via System Restore, it was too late.

I tried to reset the default font but Windows does not seem to respond to that. When I click "Restore to default font settings" the button greys out but nothing else happens. No dialog box and no change in the issue. I've tried deleting the fonts in my font folder and re-installing them (from backup) but that did not work either. I inititially documented the issue here:

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-7/1020796-help-weird-font-all-browsers.html

Any ideas? Thanks!

Solution 1:

Do you have Helvetica Extra Compressed installed on your machine? It seems as though Helvetica Extra Compress was taking over as the system default for sans-serif, instead of Arial. Once I removed the font from my system fonts, everything went back to normal.

Hopefully this helps.

Solution 2:

For Chrome visit chrome://settings/fonts and check if the default font is 'Impact'.

This may not be a problem with windows, but a problem with all your browsers. (Virus?)

Solution 3:

Found a solution! I had to go into my fonts folder and delete a version of "Helvetica" font I had installed long ago. Once I deleted it, I updated my browser and everything was back to normal! So I'm guessing the font is Helvetica and not Impact.