All fonts scrambled at startup. Help

[Abu]

I use winXP prof. I started my system today and most of
the fonts were scrambled (symbol-like charachters in
dialog boxes, menues, filenames...). Looks like fonts are
for some reason not loaded by the system. If I open
folder c;/windows/fonts it does not show any files (I
have show hidden and system files enabled). I dont
remember how I arrived to this, but I can restore fonts
in most places (but not all) if I search for *ttf
(extension for truetype font files) and then copy all of
them into c:/windows/fonts folder. Once this is done the
normal text slowly appears in menues, filenames dialog
boxes, but this does not solve the problem entirely,
because if I restart the computer, everything is
scrambled again and I have to repeat the fonts copying
procedure (I use other working computer to understand
what each (scrambled) comand means.
My recent activities just prior to this happening where:
installed some upgrades from adobe, run AdAware, run
System Mechanic

Addition in reply to someone's comment:
I did reinstall all the fonts. Still have the scrambling
at start up. Interestingly, if I serch for font files
(using *.ttf as serach string), they are all found in the
right place (in Fonts folder), but if I open Fonts folder
directly, it is empty. If I run install fonts, I see the
icons, but again, closing and reopening gives empty
folder. The font files are somehow dont stay there...

-----Original Message-----
You are missing a certain font, which is seemingly

unimportant, but is crucial to showing correctly. The
computer is selecting the closest font it can find, not
usually close at all. Reinstall ALL of your original fonts

 

[xe77]

It could be caused by an Adobe component, or something that
System Mechanic did. Have you tried just using Windows
System Restore?

 

[Guest]

Yes I did system restore. Does not help.
I Uninstalled the adobe stuff which I installed
yesterday. I run system mechanic many, many times. May be
adobe replaced some file, and only then sysmechanic
removed it, but shouldn't then "restore" take care of
essential files. I can actually restore everything to
normal by installing all fonts, but it gets screwed after
restart. Norton wIN dOCTOR found a couple of problems in
ActivX, and fixed it, but those fixes seem to be
irrelevant to the main problem...

 

[-xiray-]

It could be caused by an Adobe component,

In over a decade using Adobe products I've never heard of one screwing
up the windows fonts folders. I doubt anything you loaded from them
caused the problem. I can't speak to what System Mechanic might have
done. I don't use that program.

Sounds to me like the entire font folder is corrupted. And though
there might be other solutions, the only one I know of is to reinstall
the OS.

 

[Guest]

I have just had this happen to my computer- I had to system restore back to 3 weeks earlier and that seems to have fixed it for now, but it does look as if quite a few computers have had the same problem. I am based Uk and not aware of downloading any adobe files lately!!
Sonia