Hardware Analysis - XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Jason White — 2008-04-03T19:07:13-05:00

I really appreciate all of you taking the time to figure out what the problem is. I removed the Korean IME support and the the problem has not happened since then. As it seems like that is the problem I am going to a repair with my XP Professional CD and then try to reinstall the Korean support. This should tell me once and for all if that is indeed the issue. If that's not the case and it is my video card, wouldn't it have issues when I'm streaming videos or displaying things like 3D poker that I play? I checked out the font tutorial on the Microsoft site. When I checked it some areas used tahoma, while other programs used trebuchet MS. Not quite sure if that is how it is supposed to be. Should I apply the same type of font to everything? I'm basically going to try everything mentioned in all of your posts, starting with cleaning all the dust inside the case first. I will make sure and update the status as soon as I have done all the suggested steps. Thanks again for your patience and your time. Cheers, Jason.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

DublinGunner — 2008-04-03T11:26:13-05:00

Further to your post, I would be 99% sure that this is an OS / software issue.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

john albrich — 2008-04-03T11:19:02-05:00

DublinGunner said:

That's what I would think from a general memory or memory controller issue as well. That's why I originally thought it was very unlikely to be a hardware problem (see earlier post http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/71179/#532727).

It would take a very unique (and I think unlikely) set of circumstances to be a hardware problem and not show up in other ways. I just don't know enough about how Windows manages fonts in memory to be 100.0% certain.

I too believe changing the fonts (also noted earlier) will tell us more about this odd problem.

Here's something else that can be done to obtain more information....

Try booting from and using a self-booting system diagnostics or LiveCD/DVD disc.

If the problem does not show up again, then we can be fairly certain it is likely some wayward Windows-bound process intermittently interfering with font management or an unusual font management failure.

If it does continue to show up with the hard disk and Windows totally out of the picture, then it's clearly a hardware issue. Further, the diagnostics may indicate a specific failure.

A good live CD/DVD to use (and to have on hand in general) is Knoppix. But to just boot up in another OS you can also use Ubuntu.
http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/
http://www.knoppix.org

In addition to various repair/recovery programs, Knoppix (based on Linux) contains an explorer-like file manager, browser, office suite, email, etc. Since it loads directly into memory to set up its virtual environment, it will also exercise a good portion of memory related hardware.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

DublinGunner — 2008-04-03T09:45:09-05:00

If it was an unusual ram issue like that John, I would expect the other areas of the screen to experience similar results. Notonly that, but I would expect it to manifest itself in other ways too - program crashes, BSOD - the usual ram related issues.

Secondly, the text doesnt look garbled to me, but it looks like maybe the wrong type of encoding is selected. Or, the particular font that occupies those areas of the screen has become corrupt.

As its not just happening in IE, I doubt its the encoding issue I pointed out.

Was there anything in particular that changed / happened before the problem arose?

As you're running XP Professional, a fairly quick repair install should rectify the problem, by re-writing the OS level files.

Do you have the XP disk?

**Edit
Before going that extreme however, try following this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310543

And change anything in the item list back to a standard font, such as Arial

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

john albrich — 2008-04-03T06:12:04-05:00

Dr. Peaceful said:

...That statement there, made me wonder it may be hardware.

That is compelling, but for that to be the case, I would think that means there has to be a specific fixed physical memory location where fonts are always loaded by Windows. Then, the failure would have to be intermittent yet 100% consistent to produce the same artifacts.

(It reminds me of hardware that stores fonts in ROM modules. For example, the very first IBM PC color graphics adapter stored 2 fonts on the adapter card, and that's all you got. You could select one or the other with a jumper.)

But, I don't think Windows handles font loading in that manner. However, it's been a long time since I've dealt with that OS detail.

We might be able to test the fixed memory loading location hypothesis by increasing or decreasing the amount of system RAM. That might cause Windows to relocate where it stores the font(s) if that is in fact what is happening. That could result in the font symptom going away, and some totally new and different problem showing up.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Dragon Peaceful — 2008-04-03T03:57:05-05:00

Jason White said:

... I actually wrote this reply earlier on and when I was almost finished it happened. It doesn't shut anything down but I can't read what it is I am writing...

That statement there, made me wonder it may be hardware.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

john albrich — 2008-04-03T03:51:01-05:00

I don't believe it's a hardware problem. On the screen shots, it appears the font is affected only in certains instances. For example, in the browser panel we see a number of almost certainly text data displayed correctly, while others of what appear to be a common type are corrupted. We also see that the clock in the lower right hand of the display is corrupted.

This suggests that anything that uses the system's current "default" text (whatever you have it assigned to be) can be corrupted, but items that use a different text are not.

It could also explain the difference in Word.

I think it would be very instructive to change the default text of the system (e.g. select a different font/character set) and then revisit the same panels you've already shown us. Then, compare them. I'd also expect the clock to change its appearance as well.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Dragon Peaceful — 2008-04-03T03:22:21-05:00

Since you can actually obtain Print Screen images showing the bad fonts, it's definitely Not a monitor issue. If monitor malfunctions, you can't see right, but Print Screen will actually obtain a correct image when view by a different screen / computer.

My guess is, it could be some kind of language settings that mess things up. You might be accidentally re-enable the same thing to Windows after you re-formatted. The other possibility, though less likely, is your video card is starting to go, since you said it only happened randomly / suddenly and after re-formatted, problem continued. Also it's getting worst / more frequently. Check to see, if it's not something as simple as dust build up inside the case.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

DsL.Dilbert — 2008-04-03T02:01:51-05:00

Edit: Nevermind. Bad pixelation.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Jason White — 2008-04-03T01:48:28-05:00

Thought I'd provide a few more examples.

http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/7096/noclue3qo0.jpg

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/5606/noclue2un5.jpg

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/5466/noclue4ms1.jpg

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Jason White — 2008-04-03T00:59:15-05:00

Duhh, I'm looking like a regular Einstein over here. Not familiar with forums. Always tried to fix things myself. Thanks for the help DublinGunner. I think I got it this time? Hopefully ?

http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/1097/noclueqs4.jpg

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

DublinGunner — 2008-04-03T00:44:05-05:00

Thats not the image link lol

You need to click on the image, then click the tiny icon beside it that say 'info' or some3thing like that, it will give you the link to the pic then.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Jason White — 2008-04-03T00:38:34-05:00

Thanks again for the help guys! Seems like this problem is really acting up today. Doesn't usually happen near as often. I have provided a screen shot to see if that may help. On a side not, computer is virus, spyware, adware and malware free. Here's the link. Just wondering if anyone has ever seen anything like this, I know I haven't, before that is! Here goes http://img361.imageshack.us/my.php?image=noclueqs4.jpg.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

DublinGunner — 2008-04-02T23:31:16-05:00

You can post a direct link to the image once its hosted on imageshack or somewhere.

Re: XP Professional becomes unreadable?

Jason White — 2008-04-02T21:46:14-05:00

Thanks for the reply. The BIOS is normal, never acts up. It can occur at any random time. When I'm viewing my documents within XP or on the net. It just happens out of nowhere. Can't seem to determine what makes it happen? I could stream movie on the internet with no problems. Then I check my email and then the problem could pop up. It's just so random? I formatted the drive and the problem still occurs. It was once or twice a month, but has become more frequent. If I play poker online for example nothing is affected accept the are where you can chat with other players all else is normal. I actually wrote this reply earlier on and when I was almost finished it happened. It doesn't shut anything down but I can't read what it is I am writing. As for the language issue. I do have the Korean IME package installed but this never caused an issue before? I hope this gives you some help on what the problem may be. As I said earlier I did take a screen shot of the problem. Just not sure if I can post that on here or not? Thanks again, I really need to fix this problem before I have to buy a new monitor, lol. Cheers, Jason.