SOS - My Computer Is Failing - How to fix?

Well my weekend just got interesting. Yesterday I tried to defrag my harddrive on my 5 year old computer. It didn't work, said the harddrive only had 9% free space and it needed 15% to run. So I canceled it. Well I turned it on tonight and most of the text below icons, in the login and just about everywhere has turned to squares and checkmarks and stuff, see attached.

Interestingly enough, Firefox is mostly fine.

I barely managed to use photoshop (rather blindly to take this snapshot.)

I was planning on getting a new computer soon, but not this soon. ;D

My plan so far was to try and delete some stuff and see if defragging will help.

Anyone have any clue how to fix this?

 

mine just took a poop... 5 years old same thing... then my mobo blew out. im in the saving stage for the one im going to build. 5 years is a good run. but that may not be the case with yours. i really have know idea about it because my comp gave out before i could do anything about it.

 

Matt are you using Windows XP? If you are try system restore

 

:thumbs_up

 

Time to reinstall everything! lol...poor matt.

 

My roomate build/trouble shoots all sorts of system problems for a living.....if its serious enough pm me and i may be able to relay you his #.

 

I'm with Fletch & inwall75 ...... do a SYSTEM RESTORE before trying anything else.

Good luck.

ps: Looks like your window font has changed to "Symbol" or "Wingdigs"

 

Plan B: would be to:

Right click on your desktop.
Click "Properties"
Click "Appearance"
Click "Advanced"
Make sure that in the "Item" box the following (Active title bar, Icon, Inactive title bar, Menu, Message box, Palette title, Selected items, Tool tip) have a readable FONT associated with it. Mine reads "Tahoma" for a font.
Click "OK".

Re-boot.

Good luck !

 

+1 To snake you know your stuff.

If what he told you to do and the system restore doesn't work. Don't throw the comp out. Its still good. Might have to put a fresh windows on it however. This is an easy task if you have the disk. If you don't might have to buy one or borrow one.

P.s: Can you give us some computer specs? ie: Ram,Hard Drive size, Processor, anything to help ease the mind ...

Thanks

 

Hi

HI,
I am a computer Geek and I have had lots of problems with MS programs hogging all the space, you download this and un-instal that and guess what its stil there many of those places you visit stick little spy ware on your pc more things to load at boot you don't even know your being watched . Most geeks wipe and re-instal win-woes every 6-10 mos its the only way to speed up the system.
All my new PC have 2 hard drives and I run XP on Drive A and Linux on Drive B
Linux is much more secure , it is Virus proof it cleans up when you uninstal.
And is pretty stable unless you break something by downloading a conflict.
For newbies that Ubunti is a breeze. I love suse 10.2 it does eveything WInwoes does better faster and free. i
There are tons of programs that are trying to monitor your activity and this eats up your hard drive.
A neat trick after a clean wipe and instal is only download to a temp file this will prevent lost files defrag monthly, run a good cleaner. PS when you use windows to wipe a drive it only deletes the index and may leave intact files that can be found after wipping thats how many PC s are re-infected after a re-instal I usally use a free secure wipe to write zeros to the hard drive preventing this problem
Doug
I would try to run AdwareSE its free and will free up tons of those spyware that may be choking your hard drive, another free one is spybot. I found 200+ spyware on my PC the first time I checked.YIKES 10 % was from MS