nevermind figured it out
im using a custom theme for xp
and i guess the default font for this theme is extremely small..(its actually set on normal) but when i tried to change the font to large...nothing would happen..so i just uninstalled the theme and reinstalled it again.....it then had the same default settings which were "normal" font size but in actuality "normal" equals "small" for this theme in particular...so i just changed it to "large" this time..and it worked....
thanks for the help though!