Garbled Screen fonts (occaisionally)

[Willie]

I have noticed that my system fonts (title bars, Icon text labels, button texts, etc) will suddenly become garbled. Greyed text remains clear. I'm using the ARIAL font as an option in most of the displays. Fonts remain normal looking in my IE4 browser window, even though all other buttons, listboxes, etc. become garbled. This affects *ALL* buttons, etc, regardless of which apps are open. It has happened 3 times, now. I've updated my WIN95 with all available patches, including Y2K. The *ONLY* solution is to restart Windows. Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

[Bleeding Edge]

You can try to resolve this by deleting the font cache file. Win95 will rebuild it after reboot.

The file name is: ttfCache
Start win 95 in safe-mode at startup with the F8 key depressed. Find the above file with Explorer or find-file. Delete it and reboot.

[Willie]

Ok, thanks. I'll try deleting that file. As I said, it only does it once in a great while, and with no discernable pattern. I would expect a corrupted cache file like this would do it all the time, no?

[augidog]

by any chance have you gone to a custom size font?
this has caused the same problem for me in the past.

augidog

[Bleeding Edge]

Willie,
I can't say. It would certainly seem so but maybe not. Try it.

Sounds like augidog is familiar with this particular scent. He may be tracking the right trail.

[spdsk8r]

This happens to me sometimes, but it's because I overclocked my video card. Could that be your problem?

[Willie]

Augidog: If you mean, did I change the sizes of the fonts in the DESKTOP PROPERTIES / APPEARANCE tab, then yes. I changed them from their defaults to ARIAL, and changed the sizes. I'm using a 17" monitor, so my 1024 * 768 resolution, 24 bit color text was a bit small. I also have LARGE FONTS selected in the SETTINGS tab.

[Willie]

Spdsk8r: No, my system is running only at it's rated speed. 100Mhz bus clock, PC-100 RAM, and 4x for the AMD K6/2 processor, 400 Mhz. Not much room to overclock, there! Besides, this thing SCREAMS, and is VERY stable. Why should I mess with success? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

*ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS: "If it AIN'T BROKE, DON'T fix it!" I've learned this the HARD WAY more times than I can count! hehehe

PS: I haven't deleted that file yet... but I will, soon! < http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif <---sheepish grin

[Willie]

Bleeding Edge:
I'm curious: Do I need to delete that file in Safe Mode? Can I do it from DOS, instead?

[augidog]

Willie-if i use the defaults for 'small' or 'large' fonts, i never have a problem, but...when i played around with 'custom' sizes for some of the fonts, my system began to deteriorate to the point where i couldn't read anything.

i'm not an expert on how the fonts are integrated into the system, but i'm positive that mixing sizes caused my problem.

augidog

[Bleeding Edge]

Safe-Mode is the recommended way.

[Willie]

Augidog: I haven't used the "CUSTOM" size since I first tried it, and saw that it caused most fonts to go "outside" the buttons! That is set to the 125% "LARGE FONTS" standard. ("Normal" is too small.)

Fortunately, this happens quite rarely, and appears that it's not a SERIOUS thing, just an annoyance. Thanks for your input.

Bleeding Edge: OK, (sigh) as much as I hate SAFE MODE, I'll go for it. Thanks for the suggestion. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
---------------------------------------
OK, I've done the deed, and all went well. I won't know if it cured the problem for a while, since it's fairly rare.

[This message has been edited by Willie (edited 04-20-99).]

[Willie]

Verbalabuse:
Definately NOT a compaq. I build my own systems, using high-quality components. (EPOX MoBo, AMD K6/2 400 Mhz cpu, Maxtor 12G HD, etc.)

Jin Vitas:
Ugh! I *HATE* Windows Standard! <:P BLEAH! I'd just rather reboot... that works, too. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[verbalabuse]

I know you have tried a couple of things and are hoping they work. I wanted to put some 2 Cents in. At work, we have Compaq computers that have the Compaq display settings. From time to time, we see this happen on workstations. If you go to display properites, there are Compaq settings tab. Turning off all the advanced options from compaq and rebooting solves the problem and it never returns on those systems. Not sure what kind of hardware you are running or if this helps but it is something that I have seen on Compaqs.

[Jin Vitas]

Go to display properties/Appearance tab/ and change scheme to windows standard.

[Jin Vitas]

So willie windows standard works....
your welcome.. nice to get a response back from ya.