[][][][] squares instead of characters?

[cadetstimp]

Try eliminating the video driver as the problem. Boot the system into safe mode and then try again...

The desktop and icons will be very large and the colors won't be spectacular, but if it works then you know the video driver is the problem when running in normal mode.

If safe mode works, then to try to fix it in normal mode by using different desktop resolutions and color depth combinations. Also if your running WIndows 9x, right click My Computer and select properties. Click the performace tab and click the graphics button. Slide the acceleration tab down one setting at a time to see if that fixes it (you'll have to reboot inbetween each try)

[BFlurie]

Southern, I've seen this too -- quotes or parentheses showing as boxes, usually in message boards. It may be that there's nothing you can do about it.

[PonzSpyder]

I had this problem with IE and it turned out to be a font issue. Change font to a more commonly used one

[BFlurie]

I found this little snippet from an obscure web page -- I'm not sure exactly what it's saying:

I get odd (square?) characters where I expect commas (thousands) or slashes (dates). What happened?

Check your International settings in Control Panel. when these get corrupted, Excel will still use them, with ugly results.

[Southern Belle]

well still the same but its the system fonts

oh the .chm files yeah the menues in there do it too

well when trying the ms of installing them again i tried from same directory no go renamed dir and mad new font dir ...no go , copy to directory option no go due to "remove old 1st before installing new on"

ok tried that HEY guess what???? no go why cuz its in use
couldnt delete the normal ones from windows but tried...no worse error lol

but by acciddent when you highlight all files the started opening and had to close each one and then saw that the following had the characters

ok and couldnt read my writting on the couple others but they are the system fonts

Terminal
system
small fonts
system
roman
pm ingliutt
tt palatino lenotype
ms seriif
fixeday

and since then haven't tried to fix from safe mod or anything else...but did notice today yesterday that 1 file was like 16megs
some definate crosslink there huh

ok
NEXT......l

thank you all for helping i'll check back for more resonses later.
sb