I booted up my PC this morning only to find that the fonts and buttons have been corrupted.

The fonts are too small to be legible on the desktop and in in many applications, and the buttons seem to be corrupted in all applications.

I have not reinstalled windows for about five years. Am I just going to have to bite the bullet, reformat and reinstall windows or is there a less painfull solution to this problem?

Any suggestions gratefully received.


Win 98SE, PentiumII 667, 128Mb

1/ Delete file ShellIconCache (directory Windows)
2/ Control section Fonts (Control panel) - very fonts? corrupt fonts?

I'm having some similar issue's with Flash Player, when I use a "applet" my IE back buttons turn into 6's and the fonts get all bigger and funny alignment.

Cant open any programs when this happens until I kill IE.

Try deleting C:\WINDOWS\ttfCache

I have tried deleting shelliconcache from the windows folder and then increasing and decreasing the font size in the control panel. A new, and smaller, shelliconcache file has been generated but the problem remains. The fonts are still unreadably small on the desktop and in various applications such as outlook express, windows explorer and Internet Explorer. Buttons such as Minimize, Maximize and Close appear as corrupt squiggles in all applications.

I have tried deleting ttfcache with no effect

How many fonts have you in your fonts folder ?

Are all your fonts corrupt, or just some of them have problems?
Did you installed anything just before this happened ?
The titlebar buttons are contained within the Marlett.ttf font. You could try restoring it.

No, not all of the fonts are corrupt. In the case of text what I mean by corrupt is - so small it cannot be read.

The labels for the icons on the desktop are all affected.

In Outlook Express: File, Edit, View Tools, Message, Help are unaffected, but text in the lower panels such as the folder list are affected. Text in the preview panel is affected, but the actual text of messages when opened in the preview panel is not affected.

In Internet explorer the text underneath buttons is affected. In the address bar the word address is not affected but the URL within the address bar is affected.

In Windows Explorer the names of files and folders are affected as is the address within the address bar.

Non microsoft applications succh as Firefox seem largely unaffected except for the Minimize Maximize, Close buttons which are now squiggles in all applications.

On the start menu, and drop down menus of microsoft applications, the arrow denoting subsidiary folders is now a blob. This is not true of Firefox where the arrows on drop down menus are still arrows.

Any boxes that have to be ticked eg save password and connect automatically on the dial up connection are now illegible mush. This seems to be true of all such boxes.

As for what I was doing. Well I am not certain, but it might have been an attempt to update a DIVX player that I had installed using the update function. When I did so I received a warning to the effect that the update had stopped in order to prevent damage because the new version was not suitable for Windows 98. I say I am not certain because the computer booted up once without problems after this but on the second occasion the problem occured and has been entirely consistent since.

How many fonts have you in your font folder ?

891 Fonts in the Font Folder

Reduce that quantity and it's likely you'll be fine again.

I ran the 'Remove Duplicate Fonts' Utility within the RegRepair utility; and now I have 951 Fonts in the Font directory! Darn!

Should I just manually delete a large number of these fonts?

Presumably some are necessary and must not be deleted. But which ones?

Clean full Windows 98 SE install contains:

ABALC.TTF
ANTQUAB.TTF
ANTQUABI.TTF
ANTQUAI.TTF
ARIAL.TTF
ARIALBD.TTF
ARIALBI.TTF
ARIALI.TTF
ARIBLK.TTF
BKANT.TTF
CALIST.TTF
COMIC.TTF
COMICBD.TTF
COPRGTB.TTF
COPRGTL.TTF
COUR.TTF
COURBD.TTF
COURBI.TTF
COURI.TTF
GOTHIC.TTF
GOTHICB.TTF
GOTHICBI.TTF
GOTHICI.TTF
IMPACT.TTF
LHANDW.TTF
LSANSI.TTF
LSANSUNI.TTF
LUCON.TTF
MATISSE_.TTF
NWGTHC.TTF
NWGTHCB.TTF
NWGTHCI.TTF
OCRAEXT.TTF
SYMBOL.TTF
TAHOMA.TTF
TAHOMABD.TTF
TEMPSITC.TTF
TIMES.TTF
TIMESBD.TTF
TIMESBI.TTF
TIMESI.TTF
VERDANA.TTF
VERDANAB.TTF
VERDANAI.TTF
VERDANAZ.TTF
WEBDINGS.TTF
WESTM.TTF
WINGDING.TTF

but not all of them are really necessary. And there should be also some .FON files that belongs to original installation.

You can move other fonts to some other directory and if you will see something wrong you can copy them back selectively.

Petr

I think I have largely resolved this problem.

I deleted most of the fonts from the font folder and the problem seems mostly to have resolved itself. The buttons, bullets, arrows etc. which were corrupted now seem to be displaying correctly. And the text which was unreadably small can now be read.

The remaining problem is that this text, although now readable is still slightly smaller than it was.

This however is a minor irritation that I can live with, so thank you to all who responded so helpfully to this thread. Your assistance is much appreciated.

Regards,
Guy

Open the Display Properties applet in Control Panel, go to the Settings tab and click on the Advanced buton. On the newly opened window you can select the font size. You may need the Win98 CABs for this.

Yes, that is how I thought I should have been able to adjust the text size. However, when I go to Display Properties>Appearance, make any changes and apply - nothing happens. When I press CTRL+ALT+DEL it says Display Properties [Not Responding]

Windows supported "no problem" cca 400 fonts... reduce reduce reduce!

First try doing this in safe mode (copy the Win98 CABs to your hard drive before doing it).
If it hangs again, temporarily remove all fonts except those Petr mentioned, and try again.
If none of these work, probably your system is seriously messed up.You may need to reinstall some windows components like IE, DirectX, display drivers, etc.

I got the same kind of corruption before.
I fixed it by simply inserting the Windows CD and reinstalling windows.
It fixed the problem, and my personal files and settings are retained.

Did you really have to revive this thread just to say that?