Had a problem with windows 95b on spare computer I planned to give my son's family-as they are NEW to home computing-thought it would be good place to start... This comp was found by me- w/o disks to re-install so .....

After I used WinRescue95 to get it working again-the upper right hand "minimize", "restore up/down" and close buttons contain #'s instead?????????????????????

Also in display appearance settings the selection drop down arrows arent arrows -they also are #'s!!!!

Any help as to why this has happened

Somehow you are missing a needed font.

It is of course a bit of time I had a W95 system , but if (as it generally happens) things have not changed that much in later release that should be marlett.ttf.
But, as it happened to me just a few days ago working on a seemingly completely unrelated thing:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/XPSP1-with...0-MB-t3717.html
if I added marlett.ttf but not tahoma.ttf I had a similar effect to the one you describe.

You should try and re-add these two fonts and possibly check if anything else has "gone astray" in the Registry related to fonts.

jaclaz

To save yourself some time, first delete the C:\Windows\ttfCache file and restart. Then, if it doesn't fix the buttons, proceed as jaclaz said.

btw. sometimes just changing the appearance scheme helps, you could try switching to a scheme with different caption buttons size.

HTH

these responses helped tremendously .Thanks to all!