Fonts not working in IE 8 with Windows XP embedded

Local security policy.
Browser settings.
Website CSS code. (if works on some, but not all sites)

 

Local Security Policy - contact the tech person(s) who setup the systems and ask about browser policies, e.g. users may not have privileges to install fonts on demand.

Browser Settings - Internet Options, somewhere may be a setting re fonts.

Website CSS code - The fonts used on a Webpage can be specified in the HTML code or CSS code of the page. If a system does not have the specified font installed, the browser will use what "it thinks" is the closest match to the specified font in the code. The end user has no control over what font will be used in such cases, unless he sets the browser to ignore fonts in code and selects to use the same font for all pages.

Dynamic Fonts are essentially small caches of fonts that get downloaded along with the Webpage to the browser cache, and so long as the cache is not cleared, the fonts will continue to be rendered by the browser.

Most likely, the problem is Security Policy. In order for Dynamic Fonts to work in IE, an ActiveX control must be downloaded and installed. Other browsers don't use ActiveX, only IE.

IE handles font embedding differently than other browsers, and requires specialized code in the Webpage by it's author. See:
Font Download section on that page.