font problem

[velivolus]

Hi everybody.

as a result of trying to get Chinese to display correct in all of my applications, I seem to have made all my fonts system-wide go haywire.

Although I had installed the East Asian Language Pack and chosen simplified Chinese, I was still having problems getting Chinese to display in certain programs.

In an attempt to get rid of the garbage characters I would see sometimes, I began following links and I started installing many things. One of the things I installed was the GB 108030 support package.

Around this time I rebooted my computer to find that the display of all of my fonts had changed system-wide -- and for the worse! I would open applications to find that the font display looked totally different from before. Now often characters that should display as European with accent display as Chinese characters or as garbage. I get question marks showing up for no apparent reason--in English text. Sometimes where there should just be a blank space or a hyphen.

I have tried changing fonts within applications: Arial, Tahoma, Arial MS Unicode. No matter what I choose, the problem remains.

I have tried removing all known Chinese fonts from my system folder as a test--this only seems to make the problem worse!

Does anybody know how I might get things back to the way they were before, short of totally reinstalling Windows?

thanks for your help.

[HashiriKata]

Try this:

When your IE is open, go to "View" (on top left corner), then to "Encoding". Once there, try ticking "Auto-Select" and see if that solves the problem. If not, still in "Encoding", choose whatever encoding you think necessary for correct displaying.

[velivolus]

Thanks for your reply. My IE settings are set as you suggest, the problem is that it is not just an IE problem. It is happening across all my applications. Another thing which is happening on my system now is that all characters with European accent marks are displaying as Chinese characters. I have discovered something more about the problem though: it is happening in all of my applications, but only within applications. Within Windows Explorer itself when I am viewing my file catalogs, everything displays correctly, I can see European accents, and so on. Hope somebody will have some idea on how to fix it! Thanks.

[velivolus]

Well, I finally found the solution this this problem after about a month of tinkering!

I thought I would post the solution here, in case anyone should encounter a similar problem in the future.

In the advanced tab of the "regional and language options" there is a section called "language for non-unicode programs"

Somehow the language there had gotten set to "simplified chinese" and this was causing system-wide problems in display of western characters in all of my applications.

Hope no one else ends up battling this problem, but if you do, this is how to fix it!