Garbled text in every Windows XP screen

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael

Really, really strange occurence here!

All text in my Windows XP Home edition is now garbled.

This means:

The Welcome notice
The Desktop
The Start bar and icons
All menus, program icons, settings etc.
Text in Internet Explorer's windows, the address line,
etc.

Everything comes up as either balls, squares, lines,
triangles, the occasional questionmark and other strange
symbols.

Funnily enough, I can still type in text (like here), but
in some screens (like google's search field), it looks
like the describtion above.

What can I do! I can't even try to change things in the
language settings or something like that, because
everything is gobbeldi-gook!

Please, has anyone out there experienced the same thing?

Thanks in advance!

Mik
 
Someone has been playing around with the Appearence settings. Change them
here:
Control Panel/Display/Appearence/Settings
 
Thank you for the quick, but patronizing answer.

No, I have not been playing with the appearence settings,
and even if I wanted to check them, I have no idea what
it says anymore BECAUSE ALL TEXT IS TRANSFORMED INTO
GARBLED NONSENSE IN ALL MY MENUS, ICONS AND SETTINGS!

Now that this is cleared up, I'm hoping for more
feedback, maybe even of the constructive kind :o)

Thank you in advance

Mike
 
Hi Joe,

YES! It looks exactly like that!

Down to the same symbols on the start button!

What wisdom can you convey to me of this problem? I sense
a solution coming... *very excited*

thank you thank you thank you

Mike
 
There is around 30 megs of fonts in that folder, seems to
be the normal ones like times and so on. As seen from the
DOS command prompt, it looks pretty much OK

Mike
 
The desktop in the link I provided was the result of the fonts somehow being
removed from the Fonts folder. I am reasonably sure that McAfee Quick Clean
3 deleted the Fonts.

The only solution that worked for me was to re-install XP since I did not
have System Restore enabled then. Even then, not all of my programs such as
Internet Explorer, MS Word, and WordPerfect could "see" all the fonts. I
got a tip from the Word Perfect newsgroup to install and run BitStream Font
Navigator on the Word Perfect CD. Doing so, enabled all of my programs to
"see" all of the fonts.

You can try a System Restore or you can try the solutions offered in these
two articles.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=314960

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/2f232.htm

In the second article, you'll notice that if the solutions don't work, then
you'll have to re-install XP.

HTH

Joe
 
Joe,

Thanks for the suggestions, I have much more to go on now.

I'll see where it leads, anyway.

Thanks again

Mike
 
Thank you for the quick, but patronizing answer.

No, I have not been playing with the appearence settings,
and even if I wanted to check them, I have no idea what
it says anymore BECAUSE ALL TEXT IS TRANSFORMED INTO
GARBLED NONSENSE IN ALL MY MENUS, ICONS AND SETTINGS!

Now that this is cleared up, I'm hoping for more
feedback, maybe even of the constructive kind :o)

Thank you in advance

Mike
Click to expand...

Mike - Try a System Restore to just before the problem occurred. If that
doesn't work, then you can put the XP cd in the drive, go to Run and
type "sfc /scannow" without the quotes. Note there is a space between
"sfc" and "/scannow". This will replace any damaged system files. I
assume that you've already scanned for viruses with a current
(post-2002 version using updated definitions) antivirus.

Cheers,

Malke
 
You're welcome. You can try the System File Checker solution just mentioned
by another poster. I tried that as well, but no joy. However, since your
fonts are still in the Fonts folder, you might only have a damaged font or
several damaged fonts causing the problem.

The SFC solution might work for you.

Joe
 
You are all my heroes, but you, Malke, stands foremost
among them.

With the repairing of the system files, I was able to see
what I was doing, since most of the fonts returned.
Finally being able to see the menus, I could do a system
restore. And everything is fine now!!!

Thank you so much to all who responded!

Mike
 
Glad to hear you got the problem solved and thanks for posting back to let
us know what worked.

Joe
 
Michael said:
You are all my heroes, but you, Malke, stands foremost
among them.

With the repairing of the system files, I was able to see
what I was doing, since most of the fonts returned.
Finally being able to see the menus, I could do a system
restore. And everything is fine now!!!

Thank you so much to all who responded!

Mike
Click to expand...

Aw gosh... I'm happy it worked for you.

Cheers,

Malke
 
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