>
> No, it's not Sans Serif, it's Arial, just the bold-italic variant of
> it.  Try this:
>
>   M-: (face-font 'variable-pitch) RET
>
> What do you see?
>

Correct, variable-pitch face is set to bold-italic variant of Arial; I get

"-outline-Arial-bold-italic-normal-sans-17-*-*-*-p-*-ascii-0"

I tried applying your patch but that was futile (I get the same result) as
I cannot build emacs on Windows.

faces is preloaded, so it's not enough to recompile it.  And w32 is
> correct, since it should name the frame type (a.k.a. 'window-system')
> value, not the system type.
>


> You need to dump Emacs after byte-compiling faces.el.
>

Thanks for that info. Some one who can build emacs on Windows should be
then able to verify the patch.
-- 

-- 
Kaushal Modi