Illustrator CS4 Toolbar Icons have 'smeared'!?!

Hey folks,
Got a strange problem this morning when starting my work copy of Illustrator CS4, a large number of the toolbar icons have smeared for some reason? See the image below for what I mean, when you click and hold on any one of them all the tools in that family are also smeared, they all appear to work fine mind you.
Has anyone else had this problem and know of a solution? I have rebooted the system, updated CS4, updated windows, updated graphics driver
None of the other components of CS4 are having issues.
I am running CS4 design premium on Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit on a Dell Precision T5500, Xeon E5520 Processor with 12GB of Ram and a Nvidia Quadro FX1800 if that's any help to anyone.
Thanks in advance.
Jami.

I would think this was conflict of some kind more like a plug in than hardware.
However if it just started happening it might be something to do with a setting either in the drivers for the card or Illustrator or the system
you can try toreset your settings by holding down the control, alt and shift keys (all 3 together) while starting Illustrator.
That will reset the settings or you can move or delete the settings folder if that does not help, sometimes something else in the folder becomes corrupt.
Also this can be a conflict with a font, if you have installed or updated software recentlyI would suspect that software or font. Have you used any free fonts recently in a document?
Here is how you find and remove the settings foder
1. Quit Illustrator.
2. Rename the AIPrefs file (for example, to AIPrefs.old) in the Users/(user)/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS3 Settings folder.
3. Start Illustrator. Illustrator creates a new preferences file.
4. you can also just trash this folder if the new preferences work out fine. Also if this does not work then move the entire Adobe Illustrator CS3 Settings folder to a different location like your desktop for temporary storage Illustrator will create a new folder with all the elements required within the folder and those settings will be fresh default.
However if there is a conflict or hardware issues this will not probably help.
if you do not find the in this location do a search for it.
Also if you have moved the computer or installed any hardware in your desktop it could be the card is no longer seated well or the card is not quite right or the display could be funny or going funny. But I do not think so.

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Hi Mylenium,
Thanks for the response!
Removing and re-adding the link to the taskbar doesn't solve the problem unfortunately...
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The following is a general list of things you may try when the issue is not in a specific file (you may have tried/done some of them already); 1) and 2) are the easy ones for temporary strangenesses, and 3) and 4) are specifically aimed at possibly corrupt preferences); 5) is a list in itself, and 6) is the last resort.
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Message was edited by: Mike Wickham

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Thanks

Tab key?
This is for a Mac
But if you happen to be launching AI from what you think is an alias then you probably are trying to launch it from a duplicate of the application instead and which now resides outside the application folder.
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Trash the Adobe Illustrator Settings Folder in your users preferences Users/Username/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings Folder

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At work (University of St Andrews) I have Adobe CS4 Web Premium and everything installs and runs okay apart from Illustrator CS4.
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Error:
Error 2
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INSTALLATION #2
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Hi Carey,
Thanks for your post. I have followed your instructions and here are my replies:
Are you having any issues with your other Adobe products, or is it just Illustrator?
If just Illustrator, did you previously install the product separately (i.e. as a trial, or as a pre-release/beta)?
I am having problems only with Illustrator CS4. I have not installed the product separately, either as a trial or a pre-release or beta.
In fact, I installed Adobe CS4 Web Premium on a clean, newly installed, straight-from-the-Dell-factory Dell Precision T7400. It was the first application I installed, and Illustrator wasn't working straight after the installation.
I've not had any problems with other Adobe applications. The only time the serial number became an issue was when I tried to reinstall Illustrator CS4 using "English (US)" as an option, simply out of curiosity as this hadn't been an option with the original installation of the whole suite.
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Updated permissions for Public Documents (although when I reached step 12: "Click Apply and click Permissions tab." there was no Permissions tab).
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Adobe Bridge CS4
Adobe Extension Manager CS4
Supporting Components:
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The installer ran, and I got exactly the same error as before:
Error
Adobe Illustrator CS4 LangPack (en_GB)
Error:
Error 2
Now when I try to run Illustrator CS4 I get a dialog box saying:
Error
The localized resource files for this application could not be loaded. Please reinstall or repair the application and try again.
This is the ninth time I've tried to reinstall it.
I'll try to send you a direct message with the serial number and take it from there.
Thanks
Gareth

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Well, my setup is Mac OS X 10.6.3 and Illustrator CS4 and I have this feature which I really dislike. I can't move any objects unless I select them first, and it sucks big time.
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Wade_Zimmerman wrote:
mrmille is a good team player i won't you ay and I am glad you did that update.
Not something you would remember.
BTW do you mind if others point users to your trouble shooting page?
I wonder if this problem has also popped up on Windows as well?
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I try to keep things updated. One ongoing challenge since the merge of the Windows and Mac forums has been to include specifics for both sides; I still make corrections when I stumble upon, or realize, inadequacies.
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Thanks for asking.
Do you mean reinstall with the cds?
I have not. Is there a way I can talk with someone? I don't really even know how useful this license will be. The computer I'm using now is probably not the one on which cs4 was originally installed. That computer died, and I cloned it/migrated its programs, etc. to a newer one, using a time machine back up. This new comuter is running Mavericks. Surely the original OS was pre Mavericks. The present computer also has no CD drive. The Cs4 package I have (on my hard drive) is version 14.0.0 copyright 1987-2008. I do not know if this is as installed out of the box, or possibly upgraded through the internet over time.
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