Gpg4win 5.1.1 Kleopatra UI text displayed as square boxes on Windows Server 2016

Gpg4win help-en
1

I am testing Gpg4win 5.1.1 on a Windows Server 2016 Standard (64-bit) UAT server and have encountered an issue with Kleopatra.

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Environment

  • OS: Windows Server 2016 Standard
  • OS Version: 10.0.14393 (Build 14393)
  • Gpg4win Version: 5.1.1
  • GnuPG Version: 2.5.24
  • Installation completed successfully without errors

Issue

Kleopatra launches successfully and all icons are displayed correctly. However, all menu items, labels, buttons, and column headers are rendered as square boxes (□□□□□) instead of readable text.

Verification Performed

  • Standard Windows fonts (Segoe UI, Tahoma, Arial) are present.
  • English (en-US) language pack is installed and fully localized.
  • Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables are installed.
  • Notepad and other Windows applications display text correctly.
  • GnuPG command line functions normally (gpg --version works without issue).

Question

  1. Is Windows Server 2016 (Build 14393) officially supported by Gpg4win 5.1.1 and Kleopatra?
  2. Are there any known Qt/KDE Framework rendering issues on Windows Server 2016 that could cause all UI text to appear as square boxes?
  3. Is there any recommended workaround, patch, or configuration change to resolve this issue?
  4. Would using an earlier Gpg4win release (such as 4.x) be recommended for Windows Server 2016 environments?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thank you.

2

Hi @DavidNaveen, Gpg4win 5 uses Qt 6 and that is not supported on Windows Server 2016. In this thread a user suggested a workaround which might help though no one tested it yet so there is no guarantee that it works: 5.0.2 UI is all tofu squares on Windows Server 2016.

Please don’t use older releases of Gpg4win as they miss important security fixes!

3

Hi @cklassen

Thank you for your response. In that same post, the op mentioned both workarounds are not working.

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4

To clarify:

No, because of the next point

Yes, it is because of an Qt 6 issue and they decided no longer support Windows Server 2016 any more: Qt6 and Windows 2016 | Qt Forum

No, not for Gpg4win. If you only need the command line, you can install the current GnuPG package instead (without Kleopatra, GpgOL etc).

If you require the GUIs, too, you could consider licensing GnuPG VS-Desktop, which will use Qt 5 until the 4.0 release.