[tom autry]

Hello everyone , I run 2005 HP comp. with XP home . Everything has been good until I booted up today . Now all my text is in symbols instead of words . Has anyone ever heard of this ? Thanks for your help, Tom

[LTheobald]

I've not heard of it but it could be either a virus or some spyware.

Do you have a virus scanner running? If not go stand in the corner for 10 minutes facing the wall and think about what you have done :P After that, try one of these free (but pretty good) virus scanners:
Avast! - http://www.avast.com/
AVG - http://free.grisoft.com/

Then after that I would try running some spyware removal tools. Some good ones being:
AdAware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot: S&D - http://www.safer-networking.org/

Install and run both of these. You will probably run these in safe mode though. To do that, first run the programs in normal mode and update them so that they catch as much spyware as possible. Then close the programs down and restart the computer. As it loads back up hold the F8 key. After a while you should see a prompt asking how you want to load windows. Choose "Safe Mode". When Windows loads, run scans from both programs (one after the other is the best way to do it).


Failing that - have you tried using System Restore to take the PC "back" a few days to see if that helps anything.

[tom autry]

Thanks for the repy, I have AVAST and several spyware such as AD-AWARE and SPYBOT but I have not tried them in "SAFE MODE" . I will give this a try and see if that helps . Thanks again,Tom

[tom autry]

Ran all my anti-virus and spyware in safe mode ,found nothing ,any other suggestions?

[tom autry]

Well I ended up formating the computer ,now all is well .Thanks for the help! Tom