Menu fonts all turn into boxed capital "A"s

At some point last night, while I was working on my 10.4.9 PowerMac G4, something happened and my menu fonts all turned into some glyph that looks like a capital "A" inside of a box. All of the text on the desktop, menu bar, window titles, and the left side of a finder window have this change. Files displayed within a finder window, however, do not.
Does anyone have any idea of what might have gone broken to cause this, and ideas on what I can do to try to fix it? I'd rather not reinstall if that's an option.
I've run Disk Utility and DiskWarrior to make sure the drive is up to spec, and it checked out.
PowerMac G4 Dual 1Ghz (MDD) Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Would it be possible to replace that font from
another 10.4.9 system?
Sure, from any OS X system at all. But I imagine you
still have Lucida Grande (look in
System/Library/Fonts) and I doubt replacing it will
help. Worth a try, but I think the problem is
something messed up in the OS that makes it think the
font is gone.
That, also, appears to be the case. Sigh. Looks like it's reinstall time.
Thanks for the tips, though!

Similar Messages

My update buttons all turn into open buttons

I had this happen on my iPad and it took a software update to fix.
I open the app store (currently with a badge of 24 apps). I go to updates. All of the apps that need updated have an update button next to them, however, those buttons turn into "open" buttons in about half a second. Tapping them simply opens the apps.
I've updated to the latest software and still no luck, it's misbehaving. This is not cool. Any help appreciated.
Dan P.

Hi Dan,
If you are having issues with your App Store update buttons changing to Open buttons, you may want to try some things to troubleshoot.
First, quit all running applications and test again -
Force an app to close in iOS
Next, I would try restarting and if needed resetting the iPhone -
Restart or reset your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
If the issue is still present, you may want to restore the iPhone as a new device -
How to erase your iOS device and then set it up as a new device or restore it from backups
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

Phone used for nearly a year and recently pics taken by rear camera are all turned into green but front camera worked fine, any clue?

pics took by rear cam all turn to green but front cam normal, please advise?

You can't do anything to get service in your country by Apple, the warranty is only valid in the country where the phone has been bought.
If you can't bring it back to the USA, you'll have to get it checked by an experienced 3rd party repair shop, but this will void the warranty, and Apple will not service the device anymore, even if you want to pay for it.

Help! My Menus have all turned into "A" boxes

Hope someone can help. I did some software updates yesterday to latest Itunes and Quicktime versions. For some reason the Latest OS X 10.1.8 would not load. So I still have 10.1.7 right now.
Since these updates, my menus (across top of screen) and drop down boxes have lost their text and have been replaced by capital 'A' s in a box.
So even if I wanted to go into my applications I now cannot read menu anymore and right now I am going by memory on where things are.
Anyone had this happen before?

This issue has happened before, and appears to be an issue with Unicode character mapping. Currently, the only available solution is to perform an Archive and Install of Mac OS X followed by running all relevant updaters.
(19884)

Korean letters turned into boxes

My X220 tablet, i7, 8 gigs, multitouch, windows 7 professional used to be able to display korean in Itunes (names and such) and also type in Korean, but for some reason, now it only display boxes. Any suggestions? I need Korean for class too, so i need it fixed soon.

Try this: Type fonts in the start menu search and pick the first search result on the top "Fonts", which will bring you to the control panel that shows all installed fonts on your PC. On the left pane click "Font settings" > uncehck "Hide fonts based on language settings" > Click "Ok" at the bottom. Restart you computer just to be sure the setting went through. See if that helps.
If the above does not work, try deleting your font cache and resarting your PC. The font cache file is located at [C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT] delete FNTCACHE.DAT file, restart, and see if that help.

Characters such as apostrophes and smart quotes turning into boxes or question marks

We recently upgraded from CF5 to CF7 and are having a problem
with previously saved text that no longer displays correctly. Some
characters (apparently, non-ASCII characters such as curly
apostrophes and smart quotes) are rendering as boxes or question
marks. We recently upgraded to Oracle 10g from Oracle 8i, but this
problem appears to be independent of the database that the text is
stored in. Here is sample code that will illustrate the problem:
<CFSET string1="Department’s">
<CFSET string2="hey—there">
<CFOUTPUT>
string1 is #string1#
<BR>
string2 is #string2#
</CFOUTPUT>
output looks like this:
string1 is Department?s
string2 is hey?there
These are rendered as boxes when viewed in Internet Explorer.
(They show up as question marks when I copy and paste them here.)
The Demoronize UDF helps *some* of the time, but this is
still happening with a lot of text, especially text that gets
pasted from a website into a form, then saved to a database. Does
anybody have a solution for this? This is breaking my applications
and is incredibly annoying. I'd like to either replace the
problematic characters at the time they are displayed, or replace
them when they are input in the database in the first place (and go
back and update all the previously saved data to replace the
problematic characters with plain text equivalents).
Any suggestions appreciated.

I finally isolated the problematic characters so I edited the
DeMoronize UDF (available at cflib.org) by adding the following
text replacements at the bottom:
text = Replace(text, chr(8208), "-", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8209), "-", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8210), "–", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8211), "–", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8212), "—", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8213), "—", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8214), "||", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8215), "_", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8216), "‘", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8217), "’", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8218), ",", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8219), "'", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8220), "“", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8221), "”", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8222), """", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8223), """", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8226), "·", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8227), ">", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8228), ".", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8229), "..", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8230), "...", "ALL");
text = Replace(text, chr(8231), "·",
"ALL");

Words under icons and across top of screen have turned into boxes?

I have 7 Macs that I work on between work and home and I have never run across this before... one of our Mac Mini's (Tiger 10.4.11) suddenly has empty little boxes instead of words underneath the icons on the desktop and in the dropdowns under the Apple icon. Also across the top of the screen. Does anyone know how this may have happened and how I get back to words? I don't have a clue where to start. Thanks for your help!

"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Tiger Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then Safe Boot , (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it finishes.
If many Permission are repaired, or any Directory errors are found, you may need to re-apply some the latest/biggest updates again, or even do an A&I if you have enough free disk space.
The combo update for PowerPC-based Macs...
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html
The combo update for Intel-based Macs...
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateintel.html
Repair Permissions before & after re-install, then reboot again each time.
If all the above fails, then it appears to be time for a relatively painless Archive & Install, which gives you a new/old OS, but can preserve all your files, pics, music, settings, etc., as long as you have plenty of free disk space and no Disk corruption, and is relatively quick & painless...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120
Just be sure to select Preserve Users & Settings.

PDFs in XP are bigger and TABs turn into boxes in Acrobat 9

I recently upgraded a computer from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.
Now when Illustrator saves as PDF the files are 100kb or more bigger.
TAB characters display as rectangles in Acrobat 8 and 9, but not 5.
I have since tested 3 computers in about 10 different combinations of XP, 2000, Acrobat 5,8,9 with Illustrator 10 and CS2.
Without fail, it looks like Illustrator can not create a proper PDF in Windows XP.
Another note is that some fonts are saved as AFM (or whatever the A icon means) in the PDF but they are all TTF when saved in XP.
In windows 2000 the PDFs created are always smaller and the Tabs do not show up as rectangles in either XP or 2000.
Windows 2000 - 40kb
Windows XP - 130kb
This is just with a few Arial fonts and some shapes. Both using Illustrator 10.
So there you go. Have fun using XP.

>I recently upgraded a computer from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.
Did you do an upgrade or a clean install of XP?
My guess is the latter because...
>Another note is that some fonts are saved as AFM (or whatever the A icon means) in the PDF but they are all TTF when saved in XP.
...if I understand you correctly, it sounds like the fonts you were using in your Win 2000 setup did not get installed in your XP setup. (The 'a' icon indicates a PostScript Type 1 font.) Lacking the original fonts, Illustrator probably used available TrueType or OpenType versions. (Did you get a font substitution message the first time you opened your documents in your XP setup?) Since you are embedding different fonts in your PDF document, you can expect file size differences.
Different fonts (with possibly different encodings) could also account for the "rectangles."
If indeed you did a clean install of XP, you must be sure all OS and application features and settings -- e.g., fonts, language, ai prefs -- are the same as they were in your Win 2000 setup. Otherwise, comparisons are meaningless.
There is absolutely no reason change of OS, in and of itself, would cause larger PDFs to be created.

The fonts all turned bold even in sites and even in mails for read and unread mails.

When I visit any sites, the fonts on my browser turns bold. Even when in my e-mail accounts (yahoo, gmail), my read and unread mails/messages are both in bold. Why? What Should I do?

Such an error can indicate a problem with a missing or corrupted font.
You can try to run the System File Checker program to see if that fixes it.
* http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html
Other things that need attention.<br>
See http://www.mozilla.com/plugincheck/
Your above posted system details show outdated plugin(s) with known security and stability risks that you should update.
*Next Generation Java Plug-in 1.6.0_14 for Mozilla browsers
Update the [[Java]] plugin to the latest version.
*http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html (Java Platform: Download JRE)

How come the pics I take with my iPhone are all turned into jibberish?

Ever since I upgraded the OS on my iPhone 3GS to version 4, I have a weird problem. When I take a picture and try sending it to someone who's on a PC, it asks me "You can reduce message size by scaling the image to one of the sizes below", which it never did before. I then have to choose between small, medium, large, and original. Whichever size I choose, the person who gets the email get nothing but pages after pages of letters, like "AAIAAAGAAAkgEOSSABAEEgn", and so on. I restored my iPhone and copied everything back from my backup, but to no avail. Still the same problem. And I did a test with a video. Same result. If I send the file to someone with a Mac, no problem. By the way, my iPhone has never been jailbroken. Any idea what's going on?

Disable Photo Stream in the System/iCloud preference pane
and in iPhoto's Photo Share preference pane.
Reboot and reenable both respectively. That should jump start Photo Stream.
OT

Help - my programs have all turned into product trials and I can't open anything?!

I have a annual membership and have been fine for 7 months and suddenly my files are now asking me to confirm my trial when I open them?!
I need to work today and can't open anything!!!
What can I do??

You don't say if you are on Mac or Win. If the latter, this may be helpful:
http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/application-file-icons-change-acroba t.html

Distiller CS4 is turning lines into boxes. How do I fix it?

I recently purchased CS4 Design suite. I am having problems now making PDF's using Distiller. I have tried making several PDFs using Illustrator and InDesign files. Each time I make a Postscript file and put it through Distiller my vertical lines turn into boxes. So my nice thin hair lines are coming out as thick boxes. If I export a file as a PDF straight from InDesign it is fine. Help me please!!

Simple! Dont use distiller!
It is effectively obsolete, you can go straight to pdf from any of those applications.
There are functions that don't work well through distiller but work perfectly in pdfs.

Why does my ? turn into a french e with an accent?

I am using a mac book pro, logged into my work email Microsoft Outlook, trying to answer an email and my ? keeps turning into a capital french E with an accent. How do I fix this?

fehmida wrote:
my ? keeps turning into a capital french E with an accent. How do I fix this?
Normally that means you are using a French Canadian keyboard layout. Go to system prefs/language & text/input sources and make sure that only the box for US is checked.

How to advoid Pdf attached files turning into winmail.dat file causing incovinience opening them? And why does the phone automatically changes the file???

The first time i opened the mail, the mail loaded the attactment as pdf file and i was able to open it without any problems. But then when i tried to open it again, i watched the phone automatically turned the pdf file into winmail.dat without any of my control. Since then, i werent able to open the file anymore! And this was lucky that i was able to see it as pdf file - all other attachments i have recieved since using my new ip6 all turn into winmail.dat
this is really incovinient and frustrating for work. i cant believe i cannot just open a pdf file as a pdf file on my ip6 in the emails i recieve. I was on ip4 before this and never have anything like this happened.
Solution needed asap please.
Thankyou!

Hi Jnkm,
I'm sorry to hear you are having issues with your new iPhone 6. If you are getting a winmail.dat file instead of a PDF, you may want to see if it may be the issue noted in the following article:
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch does not display attachment in email - Apple Support
Regards,
- Brenden

Timeline turns into a red box

When I add clips to, or move clips on, my timeline it (the timeline) turns into a red box. I am not referring to the render bar above the timeline; it looks as though someone stuck a red rectangle to my screen over where the timeline should be. I found another post concerning the same issue but all that was recommended was updating my graphics driver. I updated but the issue persists. I am running CS3 on OSX 10.7.5

>I want to know if there is a way to change it back without deleting it and redrawing it.
Select it and right click, then choose content and select unassigned. You'll have to delete any text you entered into it first. Content is also available from the Object menu.
It's not necessarily a sin to use the background frame as a text container, too. Just set appropriate frame insets for the text.
>Check Pre-Flight and it will show that a font is used.
As soon as you have an active insertion point (which you get when you create a text frame) you have used the current default font. It's applied to the end-of-paragraph marker for the empty paragraph. Most likely you are seeing that. When you select text and convert the text to outlines it becomes an inline graphic. Try selecting the frame instead of the text before converting.
But you shouldn't need to convert to outlines at all in a modern PDF workflow with properly embedded fonts.
Peter

Menu fonts all turn into boxed capital "A"s

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for