Weird XP Home font problem (I think)

  • Thread starter Thread starter James Seldon
  • Start date Start date
J

James Seldon

I have an XP Home system that has recently developed a stange problem that I
have been able to find little reference to on the net. The login screen,
and most (but not all) text is displaying in what appears to be symbols. I
did a system restore and was able to get back to normal, but 2 days later
the problem reoccured. I did another system restore and had the same
result. 2 days later or so upon booting it was screwed up again. Luckily
I have a machine beside it to "translate" my menu's for me, but I have not
been able to find a fix for this problem. Has anyone run into this before?

Thanks

James


BTW: I've done a full virus scan, spyware scan, font folder check (200 or
so fonts, all intact and non-corrupted) so I'm not sure where to go from
here.
 
This won't be much help, but I am having the exact same
problem. That is why I am in this Newsgroup, searching
for this answer. This garbling came after I had some
serious other problems which I think were related to the
installation of a new HP printer. I had to claw my way
out of an XP blue screen of death, finally completely
reloaded windows and a printer driver update. I can
restore and the computer runs fine all day, but the next
morning I get these wierd characters on most screens -
even under my desktop icons. This AM I had to restore
again. Oh, after reinstalling XP, all previous restore
points go away.

Hope someone has a clue on this, I'll be watching.

Good Luck

Rich
 
I have had this problem as well. Somehow your language settings have been
altered. To fix it, you need to go to Control Panel and select the Regional
and Language Options. Once there, you need to select US(English) for each
option on each of the three pages. Then select Apply. You may need to
restart after this.
 
Hi James,


I've heard of a similar problem with Spanish installations of Windows
XP, where they download an update in the Catalan language and it
'converts' the system to the Catalan language.

Could it be that this is happening to you? You restore and all is
well, download the update in another language and the strange symbols
appear.

If you're using automatic updates, check this off for a while; go to
the Microsoft Update center and check what updates are available for
your machine; then obtain more information about these updates,
specifically if they are on foreign languages.


Hope this helps.
 
How can I do this when all is gibberish?

Michael Mazzone said:
I have had this problem as well. Somehow your language settings have been
altered. To fix it, you need to go to Control Panel and select the Regional
and Language Options. Once there, you need to select US(English) for each
option on each of the three pages. Then select Apply. You may need to
restart after this.
 
We have had the same problem on 2 Dell computers within a week of each other. Dell support was no help at all. We ended up having to reload XP and now it seems fine. Never did find out what the problem was
 
I own an e-machine on which the fonts were replaced by "dingbats" on four separate occasions. Has anyone gotten any professional help. I called e-machine techs and they had me do an FDISK but the problem returned. We think it's a virus and/or a trojan horse and it may return when I reload personal files from CDs. Tonight I'll scan the CDs first (it happened again this morning). BTW, after restore, I installed Norton's Internet Security 2004. The program scanned the C: drive and then did a live update. If it's a virus, why didn't Norton's work?
 
After I used the antivitus scan, the computer developed a problem starting up again. Eventually got it on and my language was in Chinese at first, then and now all is in computer type, so it is a hit and miss situation. can anybody help.? Thanks
 
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