How come I'm seeing symbols instead of letters

Question

Hey, for some reason I can only see symbols instead of text and this happens to everything on my computer. Does anyone know how to solve this problem? Is it a virus of some sort?

Answer 1

One of the two: Either someone changed installation language/Language settings on a regular desktop go to display properties>appearance>advanced.. If someone changed the font style here, windows may be using wingdings or something else that would look like junk characters. If you can go ahead & try that. If not, I'd think the only option seems to be a recovery.. & here are the steps so you don't need to recover your system again:

1) Format & recover the system.

2) Install a good AV BEFORE you plug internet in.

3) Update AV the FIRST thing when you go online.

4) Enable windows Updates so that your computer has all the available patches. In fact I'd say after updating AV, go to windowsupdates.com & get ALL the updates.

5) Now get a good Firewall if you have a always on internet connection.

6) Get some good Anti Spyware/Malware too, SPybot "Search & Destroy" & "Ad-Aware" are what I use, they are good & they come free. Also get something like McAfee's Siteadvisor, which warns you which sites are knows sites for sending spyware/malware/spammers.