Win 7 shows symbols instead of characters for desktop icons and in toolbars in some apps

J

Jack63SS

I booted my Win 7 system this morning and all the characters on the login screen looked like symbols. I was able to log in and all my icons are on the desktop, but all the labels are symbols not characters. Some of the apps, like Firefox, Chrome, Word and the Command Prompt open and display the correct text, but some, like Notepad and Internet Explorer, show just symbols. And some actually show the menu and toolbar as symbols, but the body text as characters.


I did install two new apps yesterday, so I would not be surprised if a setting got changed someplace, but I have no idea where or how. I started a command window and ran intl.cpl, and it still showed English as the language. I also checked the installed Fonts and the Fonts page only shows 4 fonts, but if you go to c:\windows\fonts ALL the fonts are there.


The fact I can't read what is on the screen makes troubleshooting and fixing this hard. If anyone has any suggestions on how to repair this I would definitely appreciate it, as that system is unusable right now. And I just checked on a Win 10 system and the Font being used in Win 7 looks like it might be Marlett ??


UPDATE: So the issue seems to be that I lost 'access' to most of my fonts. I was able to get to the Window Color and Appearance dialog and change the Icon setting to Fixedsys, which gave me readable characters for my desktop icons again. So i was able to get to Fonts, and the only 4 fonts shown are Fixedsys, System, Terminal and 8514oem. Unfortunately all the characters in the control section of the dialog are still symbols. And what is odd is that most of the Item entries in Windows Color and Appearance, like Desktop, have a blank Font field and I can't change them.

Thanks

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