Re: unreadable text when windows xp home starts

[Malke]

mike g wrote:

> hello please help !!!
> My windows XP home has been running fine but for some
> unexplaned reason say once a week the welcome screen and
> every screen after that ALL the text is garbled thats to
> say it is a bunch of symbols I am unable to reproduce most
> of the symbols useing a key board,some numbers and !% are
> used.
> The icons are normal.
> the only way to recover is to reboot into safe mode and
> select system restore to the day before.Or to a earler
> time that I knew was good.
> I have updated ALL drivers AND windows updates still no
> help.
> I have ran defrag.
> I have ran scandisk under an a:\promt it tells me there
> are errors found on my disk.
>
> any info as to what it could be or due to errors on my HD ?
> thanks

If Chkdsk (there is no Scandisk in XP) is telling you that you have
errors on your hard drive, you probably do. Download a hard drive
diagnostic from the drive mftr.'s website. You will make a bootable
floppy with this. Set your computer to boot from the floppy and run the
test. If your drive has any failures at all, replace it. This means it
would be really smart to back up all your important data NOW. A new
drive will not have anything on it. Post back if you need more help.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"

[mike g]

>-----Original Message-----
>mike g wrote:
>
>> hello please help !!!
>> My windows XP home has been running fine but for some
>> unexplaned reason say once a week the welcome screen and
>> every screen after that ALL the text is garbled thats to
>> say it is a bunch of symbols I am unable to reproduce
most
>> of the symbols useing a key board,some numbers and !%
are
>> used.
>> The icons are normal.
>> the only way to recover is to reboot into safe mode and
>> select system restore to the day before.Or to a earler
>> time that I knew was good.
>> I have updated ALL drivers AND windows updates still no
>> help.
>> I have ran defrag.
>> I have ran scandisk under an a:\promt it tells me there
>> are errors found on my disk.
>>
>> any info as to what it could be or due to errors on my
HD ?
>> thanks
>
>If Chkdsk (there is no Scandisk in XP) is telling you
that you have
>errors on your hard drive, you probably do. Download a
hard drive
>diagnostic from the drive mftr.'s website. You will make
a bootable
>floppy with this. Set your computer to boot from the
floppy and run the
>test. If your drive has any failures at all, replace it.
This means it
>would be really smart to back up all your important data
NOW. A new
>drive will not have anything on it. Post back if you need
more help.
>
>Malke
>--
>Elephant Boy Computers
>www.elephantboycomputers.com
>"Don't Panic!"
>.
>thanks for the help Malke
I have another "GOOD" HD and have tryed to copy the entire
disk over to the new drive using the new drives copy
utility BUT it stops copying after 7% is reached- and
gives me an error stateing that "copying can not contiue
the are errors on the source disk-try runing disk defrag
and scandisk and retry"
So I have tryed this 3 times but get the same error.
Is it possible to copy one drive to another- even if the
source disk has errors?
One more thing I tryed...
I have been told to run this at the command promt--
Xcopy c:\*.* F:/h/e/c/k/r/y (F) is my new drive letter)
after copying is compleat the new disk is un bootable due
to error message Windows XP could not start because the
following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32
\CONFIG\SYSTEM

I really would like to avoid a fresh install of XP

[Malke]

mike g wrote:

>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>mike g wrote:
>>
>>> hello please help !!!
>>> My windows XP home has been running fine but for some
>>> unexplaned reason say once a week the welcome screen and
>>> every screen after that ALL the text is garbled thats to
>>> say it is a bunch of symbols I am unable to reproduce
> most
>>> of the symbols useing a key board,some numbers and !%
> are
>>> used.
>>> The icons are normal.
>>> the only way to recover is to reboot into safe mode and
>>> select system restore to the day before.Or to a earler
>>> time that I knew was good.
>>> I have updated ALL drivers AND windows updates still no
>>> help.
>>> I have ran defrag.
>>> I have ran scandisk under an a:\promt it tells me there
>>> are errors found on my disk.
>>>
>>> any info as to what it could be or due to errors on my
> HD ?
>>> thanks
>>
>>If Chkdsk (there is no Scandisk in XP) is telling you
> that you have
>>errors on your hard drive, you probably do. Download a
> hard drive
>>diagnostic from the drive mftr.'s website. You will make
> a bootable
>>floppy with this. Set your computer to boot from the
> floppy and run the
>>test. If your drive has any failures at all, replace it.
> This means it
>>would be really smart to back up all your important data
> NOW. A new
>>drive will not have anything on it. Post back if you need
> more help.
>>
>>Malke
>>--
>>Elephant Boy Computers
>>www.elephantboycomputers.com
>>"Don't Panic!"
>>.
>>thanks for the help Malke
> I have another "GOOD" HD and have tryed to copy the entire
> disk over to the new drive using the new drives copy
> utility BUT it stops copying after 7% is reached- and
> gives me an error stateing that "copying can not contiue
> the are errors on the source disk-try runing disk defrag
> and scandisk and retry"
> So I have tryed this 3 times but get the same error.
> Is it possible to copy one drive to another- even if the
> source disk has errors?
> One more thing I tryed...
> I have been told to run this at the command promt--
> Xcopy c:\*.* F:/h/e/c/k/r/y (F) is my new drive letter)
> after copying is compleat the new disk is un bootable due
> to error message Windows XP could not start because the
> following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32
> \CONFIG\SYSTEM
>
> I really would like to avoid a fresh install of XP

It doesn't look like you are going to be able to have that wish. The
source disk - the one on which Chkdsk found errors - is damaged. You
might be able to slave it and pull some data off it, but basically it's
hosed. Put in a new drive, format, clean install Windows, install
drivers and programs, restore data from backups.

Better luck next time,

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"

[Noof]

I'm getting the same problem. I'm using Windows 2000 though. My
research seems to suggest that this problem has been around since
Windoes 95 and no solution has been found, other than reinstallation.
Reinstalling everytime this 'thing' occurs is no real solution though.
This screw up happens on my computer about once every 2 months. I've
had to fix it on one of my friend's computer too. He was running
Windows XP. I'm running Windows 2000. Same exact problem.

The desktop font reverts to 'system' and all other fonts revert to
simple ASCII characters. I look in the FONTS folder and there is
nothing in there, it doesn't even show me the folder that's supposed
to be in there. There is no hidden attribute and I have 'view all
system and hidden files' enabled. However, if I install all the fonts
(restored from a backup) they will install. At that point, I can
refresh my file browser and then the displayed font will return to
normal. When I look in my FONTS folder again, no font files show up.
A reboot of my machine then reverts everything back to the crapped out
settings. The font files are still gone and my text is still corrupt.

Can you help? I'm going to send ask Microsoft, but I don't expect to
get anywhere.
--

[Noof]

Found a solution to MY problem. I too was having a problem with all
of my screen fonts just going crazy. It turns out that a utility I
was using, called System Mechanic was the culprit. When I performed a
'Registry Clean' on it, it was fooling upthe FONTS registry key. This
is actually documented on the Iolo Technologies website. So, I used
the 'Restore Option' found in the Registry Tool Kit and restored the
keys that were previously deleted.

PROBLEM SOLVED!