[Zebtoonz]

I'm having a problem, it all started in December. I opened a website that was in Portuguese and all the accented characters looked like Russian letters or something. I thought, "That's strange! What's going on?" Then I noticed that sites in Spanish had the same problem with accented characters. Then in MS Word I couldn't type stuff in Spanish because the characters like the n with the tilde over it came out as a c. And my previously working just fine, Spanish spell checker, said that Secor was the proper spelling of Senor!

I opened my IE7 browser and found that the View/Encoding was set to Cyrillic. Ah-ha! I found you, you little bug! So I changed it to um, Central European (ISO), and the page displayed fine. But when I reloaded the page, it went back to being incorrect again.

So I searched and searched and Googled myself sick trying to find solutions to character encoding issues and font scripts and all--but to no avail.

Finally, I figured it must have been something I installed a couple of weeks ago that screwed up my ASCI character set or the registry or something. So I attempted a system restore, twice, only to get the message that my restores were "unsuccessful."

My next to the last resort is posting here for help. After that, I think the only thing that will do it is to reformat and reinstall Windows. So, anybody got any ideas? This problem is throughout my system: Word, Outlook, IE (funny, I don't have this problem with Firefox. I wonder why?), etc. Don't stay up late over this, please. I can live with it if I have to and I REALLY don't want to reinstall Windows.

Here's an example: Conéctate comes out Conéctate

I asked this same question awhile ago in another forum that I frequent. I tried all the suggestions but am still having the same problem. If you want to see what was covered in the thread go here http://www.talkgraph...ead.php?t=30418.

Thanks for any help resolving this issue!

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If it's corrupted fonts then this may help. If it's registry then this will not make any difference:

Restore default XP Fonts:

1. Make a folder C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW
2. Open Command Prompt and go to the i386 folder of your Windows XP CD-ROM (or C: drive if there)
3. Type: expand -r *.tt_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW *.ttf
4. Type: expand -r *.fo_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW *.fon
5. Type: expand DESKTOP.IN_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW\DESKTOP.INI (this file makes the Fonts folder "special" with all the features).
6. Using Windows Explorer or My Computer, go to your WINDOWS\FONTS folder. (Do NOT go to Fonts from the Control Panel).
7. Copy all the files you see, and paste them into the WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW folder. Choose "No to All" when prompted to overwrite. (This step will ensure that all extra fonts that you or programs have added, will be available afterwards.)
8. Restart your computer into the Windows Recovery Console by booting with the Windows XP CD-ROM and pressing "R" in the Setup.
9. Go to C:\WINDOWS and type: ren FONTS FONTS.OLD
10. Type: ren FONTS.NEW FONTS

You're all set! Just restart your computer.

[Ztruker]

If it's corrupted fonts then this may help. If it's registry then this will not make any difference:

Restore default XP Fonts:

1. Make a folder C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW
2. Open Command Prompt and go to the i386 folder of your Windows XP CD-ROM (or C: drive if there)
3. Type: expand -r *.tt_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW *.ttf
4. Type: expand -r *.fo_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW *.fon
5. Type: expand DESKTOP.IN_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW\DESKTOP.INI (this file makes the Fonts folder "special" with all the features).
6. Using Windows Explorer or My Computer, go to your WINDOWS\FONTS folder. (Do NOT go to Fonts from the Control Panel).
7. Copy all the files you see, and paste them into the WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW folder. Choose "No to All" when prompted to overwrite. (This step will ensure that all extra fonts that you or programs have added, will be available afterwards.)
8. Restart your computer into the Windows Recovery Console by booting with the Windows XP CD-ROM and pressing "R" in the Setup.
9. Go to C:\WINDOWS and type: ren FONTS FONTS.OLD
10. Type: ren FONTS.NEW FONTS

You're all set! Just restart your computer.

[Zebtoonz]

Thanks for your help, Rich! I got all the way to step 5 and then got the following:

Can't open input file: desktop.in_.

I tried it a few times thinking I'd typed something wrong, but always got the above message. What do I do now?

I did a search for the file desktop.ini and only found two hits. One in the Roxio subdirectory and the other in Office 11.

Another upcoming glitch I see, I have a Dell Dimension desktop computer and I don't have a WXP CD-ROM. The way it works is during boot up I believe I hit SHIFT F11, if I recall correctly, to initiate the process for a reinstall. I do have a WinXP CD on hand, would that work? Just want to make sure I don't botch up my machine :-)

Edited by Zebtoonz, 27 February 2008 - 08:43 PM.

[Ztruker]

Any SP2 XP CD should work since you are not installing anything, just copying files.

DESKTOP.IN_ is in the \I386 folder of an XP CD, along with the other files.

You do have a good, recent backup, right?

[Ztruker]

Any SP2 XP CD should work since you are not installing anything, just copying files.

DESKTOP.IN_ is in the \I386 folder of an XP CD, along with the other files.

You do have a good, recent backup, right?

[Zebtoonz]

Okay, Ztrucker, I'll have to attend to this after the weekend as I have some important deadlines to take care of first.

As for you comment asking if I have a good recent backup--you mean of my files? Yes, I do. Why? Is there are chance that this operation will make my OS inoperable? I like to look before I leap.

[Ztruker]

No, should not make the OS inoperable. My concern was that it might do something to your fonts, event hough the way it's writtne this should not happen. I just think it's a good idea to have a recent backup before doing any kind of repair with XP.

[Zebtoonz]

Okay, Rich, back again. I hit a glitch, but before I describe what happened I wanted to mention something. On step 7 when I copied the fonts over from fonts to fonts.new you said to choose no to all when prompted to overwrite. I did not receive this message because the fonts.new folder was totally empty--with the exception of the desktop.ini. file. So, did I do something wrong?

In any case, my glitch was at step 8. How do I restart into the Windows recovery console? I mean, I have my WinXP CD in drive D:, restart and then there is F2 to run setup, F12 to select boot options. Setup is no help, so I tried F12. I got the following:

--Onboard or USB CD-Rom drive
--Onboard Sata hard drive
--System Setup
--Hard drive diagnostics
--Boot to utility partition

I selected the first option but got stuck with F1 try again F2 Run setup, or vice versa--sorry I didn't take careful note of this.

So what's the problem? Maybe I have the wrong WinXP CD, one of the ones I have is not bootable and the other one is. Maybe it's that? Sorry for the complications.

[Ztruker]

As you said, sounds like the CD is not bootable.

Re: The fonts.new folder, these two steps should have populated it with files from the CD.

3. Type: expand -r *.tt_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW *.ttf
4. Type: expand -r *.fo_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW *.fon

Then in step 7 when you're copying all the fonts currently in your \Windows\Fonts folder to fonts.new folder, you should get a prompt or prompts about do you want to replace existing files. If not then you did something wrong.

What exactly did you do?

[Zebtoonz]

Rich, I am extracting the files from my C:\i386 folder. When I do step three, it expands all the fonts one by one, then it seems that it tries to expand again(?) because it lists down all the fonts with the following for each:

Cannot expand a file onto itself: fontname.ttf

Then appears the following: Total increase: 128 files, 9017331 bytes expanded to 15999964 bytes, 76% increase.

The fonts.new folder is still empty after this operation. I checked the i386 folder and it has each font in its *.tt_ AND *.ttf extension. Is it, for some reason, expanding into the i386 folder instead of my C:\Windows\fonts.new folder for some reason?

For step four, it's pretty much the same scenario--it supposedly expands all the files then tells me it cannot expand a file onto itself and the dear old fonts.new folder is empty. What is going on here?

Oh yeah, thanks for your persistent help with this. I had to print a Spanish newsletter today and it looked like a Russian transcript! Aagghh!

Edited by Zebtoonz, 05 March 2008 - 08:25 PM.

[Ztruker]

Guess I should have tried these steps before posting them. As written, they don't work.

The revised steps below do work. Had to remove *.ttf and *.fon from the expand command string.

Restore default XP Fonts:

1. Make a folder C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW
2. Open Command Prompt and go to the i386 folder of your Windows XP CD-ROM (or C: drive if there)
3. Type: expand -r *.tt_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW
4. Type: expand -r *.fo_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW
5. Type: expand DESKTOP.IN_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.NEW\DESKTOP.INI (this file makes the Fonts folder "special" with all the features).
6. Type: xcopy c:\windows\fonts\*.* c:\windows\fonts.new\ (Press the n key each time you get a
Overwrite D:\windows\fonts.new\xxxxxxx.xxx (Yes/No/All)? prompt).
7. Restart your computer into the Windows Recovery Console by booting with the Windows XP CD-ROM and pressing "R" in the Setup.
8. Go to C:\WINDOWS and type: ren FONTS FONTS.OLD
9. Type: ren FONTS.NEW FONTS

You're all set! Just restart your computer.


You can delete *.ttf and *.fon from the I386 folder, they don't belong there. When *.ttf and *.fon were added to the end of the expand command string, that confused it so it expanded them in the same directory the compressed files were in.

[Zebtoonz]

Got all the way to step 8 but I couldn't do anything because my computer would not accept my Administrator password. Here are the facts:

1. I am the Administrator of my computer, I have an Administrator account.
2. I use a password.
3. It is not called Administrator, it is called Zeb.
4. The only other account is a Guest account without a password.

So, now what do I do? Is there some other way to boot up into DOS? Could I possibly remove my password temporarily so that I can rename the folders? Do I need to create and Administrator account named Administrator?

[Ztruker]

When you boot the Recovery Console, it logs in as Administrator, not as an administrator level account called Zeb.

The password will be blank (none) unless you have assigned a password to the Administrator account.

This Microsoft article gives you in depth information about the Recovery Console.

http://support.micro...kb;EN-US;314058

[Zebtoonz]

Well, I wish I could say that that did it, but it didn't. Same old problem. What do I do now?

[Ztruker]

A lot of work for no reward, sorry. Look on the bright side though, at least we got the script worked out so others may benefit

Do you have any language packs installed? I guess I'm wondering if you revert everything back to US English then start over if that will resolve the problem.