Similar bug also seems to impact the tray clock

May 31, 2018 09:12 GMT  ·  By

A bug in Windows 10 April 2018 Update seems to be causing fonts in File Explorer to disappear partially or completely, with a reboot fixing it temporarily.

While this is undoubtedly a rather strange bug that nobody can reproduce with an easy pattern, several users have confirmed in this reddit discussion that fonts disappear at random times all of a sudden.

I personally haven’t seen this issue on my testing system running the April 2018 Update, but instead I encountered a similar problem that caused the date in the tray to go away entirely, in turn leaving the clock all alone in the lower right corner. Rebooting the system once again fixed this temporarily. I noticed that the same issue also exists in the latest Windows 10 Redstone 5 preview builds.

Also hitting other Windows versions

Surprisingly, some users claim that this problem has been there for several months already, and others indicate that a similar issue also existed on Windows XP and Windows 7. This could be tied to a process in Windows that handles fonts, though this is just a guess for the time being.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy workaround, and a computer restart isn’t quite the most convenient fix given that users would have to save their work only to temporarily address this issue.

Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged this error, but instead the company might already investigate it, with a possible fix to land on the next Patch Tuesday. According to Microsoft’s schedule, the next round of updates will ship on June 12, and Windows 10 April 2018 Update will receive a fresh cumulative update with security fixes and possibly other improvements as well.

We’ve reached out to the company to ask for more information about this issue and find out whether a fix is in the works or not, and we’ll update the article if an answer is offered.