asked on

IE6: Strange characters in the window title - Boxes instead of letters

See the enclosed link for a screenshot showing the problem.

http://volatility.m6.net/misc/screenshot.jpg

The title bar for internet explorer is somehow messed up. Instead of displaying the title of the web site - it displays boxes. This also applies to the window name description in the taskbar and the windows task manager. No other program is effected.

I have tried changing the font used for the titlebars.
I also tried type sfc /scannow

This did not help. I am running SP2 and think that I may have to uninstall SP2 and reinstall. As SP2 is pretty linked into programs - I am hesitant to do this. It does not look like their is an easy way to reinstall IE6. Any suggestions are appreciated.

CyanBlue

Hm... That's strange...
I don't know if this will help or not but are you using English Windows system and viewing the page in the right character set???

If I right click in the empty space, I have set to view the page in 'Western European(ISO)' from the 'Encoding' menu...

RedKelvin

you may need to add language support
http://www.learn-to-speaker.com/setxpcn.htm

There is nothing wrong with IE, it simply does not have the charcter set necessary to show the correct characters

rmgould

ASKER

My current encoding setting is Western European (ISO). I have English (United States) specified in the Regional and Language option section. I installed all 'east asian' languages. Now instead of boxes - I get chinese characters. So I agree that it is likely related to the regional settings.

Things I have also looked at... I was browsing to see if I could find anything. I did perform a 'cleanup' such as the one described in the link above.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_thread/thread/ca6e6df472524551/12c3eee20a6b17e9?q=gould+cleanup+font&rnum=5&hl=en#12c3eee20a6b17e9

I have tried reinstalling all the winxp fonts per the suggestion of

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_thread/thread/b707d261fe035fc9/b4f7d6da401bdc48?q=How+to+Restore+the+Windows+Default+Fonts+xp&rnum=7&hl=en#b4f7d6da401bdc48

none is helping.

RedKelvin

I don't think you are going to get any better than Chinese characters, it appears the page developer has used chinese characters in the title

rmgould

ASKER

The title bar is messed up for all internet pages. Yahoo, Experts Exchange, etc.. It only effects IE6. All other software is fine (including other MSFT software & windows explorer).

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

RedKelvin

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

RedKelvin

if this does not work try setting it to UTF-8

Also after making the change make sure you reload the page (ctrl+F5)

rmgould

ASKER

I have tried both of these previously. The text in the body of IE6 is fine. Only the title has a problem. An encording problem would suggest that the body and the title would have a problem.

CyanBlue

Well... Maybe I am overlooking something, but why would you see the Chinese characters from the Yahoo.com??? You should see 'Yahoo!' as long as you are in www.yahoo.com, right???
Any chance you might have some sort of spyware or any other sort of malware???

RedKelvin

Also do you have any third party toolbars installed, try removing them or turning them off, and restarting your browser

rmgould

ASKER

I ran AdAware to rule out spyware. Check out the link at the very begining of this chain. For all pages (yahoo included) - the body is fine but the title is messed up. It is hard for me to pinpoint what caused it because I only reboot my computer once a month or so. It started happening after a reboot - but I dont know what I could have run in the past month to corrupt it.

RedKelvin

Have you tried reinstalling IE, in case something is corrupted

SOLUTION

GwynforWeb

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

coderlen

Try this:

Reregister Jscript.dll and Vbscript.dll
Click Start>Run.
Type regsvr32 jscript.dll.
Click OK twice.
Click Start>Run again.
Type regsvr32 vbscript.dll, and then click OK.
Click OK.

This only takes a minute to do, and if it works, you'll know right away, without having to restart Windows.

coderlen

How about splitting the points, based on the number of responses? For instance, in this case, RedKelvin would get the lion's share of the points.

rmgould

ASKER

I ended up solving my own problem - though the answer makes little sense. Upgrading my version of Firefox fixed the problem in IE6. Who knows ;) I imagine that reinstalling would have fixed the problem but the procedure to reinstall IE6 with SP2 did not seem to be worth the possible 'bluescreen' that seems to occur all too frequently when uninstalling a SP.