Windows displays squares in place of text

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Win 98SE and Word Offce 97 are guilty parties but behaviour is also exhibited in IE5.5.

In place of text I often get little squares though the item prints correctly. Appeared to happen after reading someone elses’ Word Document sent as an email attachment. Tried so far:

– Ran up to date anti-virus software – nothing found
– Delete and re-install all fonts.
– Delete and recreate normal.dot template for Word
– Checked no references to CodePage in autoexec.bat that might be forcing a difference codeset from the Windows setting – not an issue.
– Updated video drivers and reduced screen colors per MS KB article!

Still have the problem.

Thought I had read about this in WOW at one point but can’t find in that KB.

Any ideas? TIA

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Are these files compatible with Office 97 and IE5.5?

What file types are they?

We need to know more about these files that you are having problems with.

They may have been made with a font that you do NOT have on your machine or a font with the same name but is different. Also your copy of the font being used may be corrupted!

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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The file that (may) have started the problem is no longer and is not relevant anyway. The problem is generic to Word documents and appears on some web pages too.

All fonts were replaced with originals so I don’t think that is it.

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What do you have set as your default printer?
You may think is has nothing to do with it, BUT, a text only type default print will cause things like this to happen.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Default Printer is the network shared printer it has always been (on a small workgroup – printer sits on a machine dedicated to print serving for all in workgroup)

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Is this happening to ALL machines that are on the Network or just this one computer?

Do you have the current drivers for this printer on the computer? and are they the same driver as the ones that are installed on the computer that the printer is attached to?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Only this machine. Correct Printer Driver – in the sense – same as all the rest of the machines where the problem DOES NOT exist.

TIA

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On screen display=yuck
Printed output=yay
Possible culprit: corrupt or incorrect video driver. Have you checked this yet?

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Mark,

Thanks – tried video driver – MSKB is specific about which one to use for this Videso card based on an S3 chipset but it made no difference. The da$@%&d bit is that it used to work and nothing changed (as it were!). Nothing we did in the way of software or whatever anyway.

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As you say in your initial post – I also hear a faint “bell” ringing. Unfortunately it’s very faint….

Wasn’t this something to do with document importing / type conversion? Check your current Word File -Save as… settings (doc rtf etc).

.. getting old, memory failing

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This is an interesting problem. I have seen it with Word alone, but IE5.5 as well? Sometimes an attached file can put a “macro virus” on your system. Simply a file found in your Word “Startup” folders.

There should be one at C:WINDOWSApplication DataMicrosoftWord and one at C:WINDOWSProgram FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice.

If you see a file in there that you don’t recognize as pertaining to an Add-In you use, (TextBridge for example), try moving it from the Startup folder. A common culprit is a file called PDFwrite

Does it happen every time you open a .doc? How do you open? From file menu? Shortcuts? Q186435 WD97: Formatting Lost, Symbols Appear When Opening Document states that if File/Open is set to “Recover Text from Any File” this can occur

You can test by opening Word using the /a switch: Winword.exe /a (Q244843 WD2000: What Does the Word Startup ‘/a’ Switch Really Do? ) I’m pretty sure it works w/97

But IE5.5 also? That’s a new one on me! Good luck!

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THANK YOU!

I don’t think PDFWriter.dot is actually a macro virus. I think it is a legitimate part of Adobe Acrobat. But it appeared to be corrupt. Removal solved the problem AND fixed IEv5.5 too – go figure – no that makes sense because Acrobat is integrated into IE too. A reinstall of Acrobat seems to have left everything as it used to be.

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I’m glad you resolved that perplexing problem. You’re absolutely right – the template IS a legitimate part of Acrobat.

In your case, a corrupt Acrobat template caused characters to display improperly in Word and IE. Since corruption was the issue, reinstalling Acrobat eliminated that corruption.

What I’m used to seeing are Invalid Page Faults caused by the PDFwrite template placed in the Word Startup folder or the Excel XLStart folder. Moving those templates to another folder and using Tools / Templates and Add-Ins to enable, provides easy access without having them in the applications’ startup.

I never put 2 and 2 together as far as IE, so I certainly learned something.

Happy computing! – Marc

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I’ve just remembered where I saw this. Not sure this is your problem, but…

In Widows95 and Office 4.2/95 there was an option to use a substitute font to display text on the screen. From time to time I had to play with these settings because the text was doing the same as you describe. I think because the listed subsistute was not installed on the PC.

I can’t find a setting for this in Win98 so it may have been done away with.

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