Just upgraded from 0.42- to 0.43-1 on winXP and the font used on menus/dialogs seems considerably smaller than on previous versions (did it use the system font previously?)
I think Wimp is supposed to find your system font and size, but it fails for me too (the font might be right, but the size is too small).
Looks like bug #1356907 - Win32: Size of the GUI font causes problems http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1356907&gro...
I can't help with the real bug, but at least show one way to work around it for yourself.
Edit etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc and select your preferred font and size by adding something like: gtk-font-name="Tahoma", or gtk-font-name="Tahoma 10" at the beginning of the file. Comment out or remove the engine "wimp" {} lines at the end of the file to disable Wimp or it will override your selection.
I have no idea in what way Inkscape will act differently with Wimp disabled, but if you want readable menus also on Windows this might be an option..
The cursor pos, zoom, and ruler text, however, remain as small after these changes.