Windows no longer displaying Japanese correctly.

[TheBistroButcher666 228]

Specs -

* Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

The issue I face is that all Asian characters do not display properly on my machine even though I do have the East Asian (Japanese) language packs installed. If I restart sometimes it will work fine and not be a problem at all but then several days later I'm stuck with everything being displayed as squares. I do turn my computer off when I'm not home, so I'm not leaving it on for days straight just as an fyi. I'm not sure if something I am doing or might be running something that is causing the character display to be lost?

For example this screen shot of iTunes and my file folders.

I can copy and paste the name here in Chrome it comes out totally fine. Also scrobbles fine to Last.fm.

時空海賊SEVEN SEAS

See?

So I think it's a display issue with Windows maybe? And of course iTunes I guess. I can still type and read Japanese in Chrome but the names the [browser tabs it's those damn little squares again.

I don't know what to do, most results tell me to install the language packs but I already have them installed so I don't know what is causing this.

[Zeus 7997]

When I had Windows I remember this popping up once or twice. I also had a weird bug where pages would show up as random, complicated Chinese characters at random. I was never able to pinpoint what the problem was, but it usually emerged right after "update Tuesday", so I figured that one of the system-wide updates must have borked with the display of characters (because unsurprisingly, that's real easy to screw up). You've probably already tried this but I would uninstall/reinstall the language packs again and see if it helps. If it does not, then all I can tell you is that it will sort itself out. It always did. It might take a few days though.

[TheBistroButcher666 228]

I did, it's random when it happens. Right now for example, everything is displaying fine without any problems. I think something is triggering it so I think I'll just try to remember everything I run when I start up my machine to see if something is causing the character display issues.

[FMdecibel 11]

I have the same problem with iTunes and sometimes with Chrome or Safari. :/

[DeIdeal 0]

Haven't used Windows for a (long) while, so I'm not certain about this but you could try out finding more Japanese fonts. Maybe the ones iTunes and the file browser were using were corrupted during an update or something and Windows couldn't find a replacement for them for some reason? You could try to replace them yourself.

And yeah, uninstalling and reinstalling the language packs could also solve the problem.

[kai_desu 340]

Where's your boy-microsoft-man-friend!?

As far as the Windows issue goes, it's a system locale problem. I would try going to Control Panel, under Region and Language, click the Administrative tab and change the system locale to Japanese (Japan).

Since you can see Japanese characters in chrome, it's not I don't think it's an issue with the font(s).

As far as everyone's problem with seeing squares and jumbled up chinese and half-width katakana on some pages in your browsers, that's actually due to poor web coding standards. In the header of every page web developers are supposed to set which encoding the page should be displayed in (which should be UTF-, but a lot of older Japanese websites still set their encoding to Shift-JIS (or your browser simply auto-detects it wrong because it was never stated in the first place). To fix this, you can manually set the encoding to be used. In chrome, click on the wrench (settings) -> Tools -> Encoding -> and select Unicode (UTF-, which should be at the top. In firefox, I believe the same thing is found under the Views menu.

Let me know if any of this helped!

[crucifiction 752]

I don't use Windows myself but my Sister had this problem a few times and after some research I realised that it has something to do with SimSun-ExtB. For no reason, randomly it just got 'screwed' and instead of unicode characters, squares appeared. The only fix for this, in her case, was to replace this one with original font and keep the file, just in case it happens again in the future.

Please check your fonts folder if this one has some squares inside, instead of regular characters.

Since you can see Japanese characters in chrome, it's not an issue with the font(s).

I wouldn't be so sure of that - remember that there is more than one font that can 'handle' Unicode stuff, so that if something is screwed there, you can have a partially-working Asian characters support.

[DeIdeal 0]

Since you can see Japanese characters in chrome, it's not an issue with the font(s).

How come? I'm not certain about how Windows does it, but it would seem odd if it wasn't possible for different programs to use different fonts.

Let's say that program A uses font F and program B uses a different font F'. Initially, both work work fine, have support for Japanese characters etc. Then, due to an automatic update or lack of an update, font F' or the way Windows displays fonts changes, and removes the Japanese characters from F' (Or it might even remove F' entirely, resulting in a fallback font). B no longer supports Japanese output since F' no longer "works", but since F hasn't changed, A displays everything just like before.

At least that's how I think it could happen, again, this is just speculative.

[kai_desu 340]

You guys may be right, only I've never ran into the issue of a font going "bad" when I've had this issue come up with myself. I should rephrase my sentence above to "Since you can see Japanese characters in chrome, I don't think it's an issue with the font(s)."

Programs can use different fonts if they choose, but the majority of them will use the system default, which is determined by the system locale.

But, after some research, I came across this:

Restore default font in windows 7

Because your activity at your computer, like installed many program or softwares and new fonts or cause anothers activity, your windows now not use default fonts again. This situation become of you not familiar with display fonts in windows. If you want to restore default font in windows 7, you can follow this tricks below :

1. Open the control panel and then select Appearance and Personalization

2. At Fonts point, select Fonts setting

3. Click at Restore default font settings

4. Now, your windows will be use default font again

Maybe give this a shot?

[Licio123 181]

I've had the exact same problem since I've switched from XP to W7. It's been 1 year and I couldn't fix it, luckly, restarting the PC really seems to work. I'll try the steps in kai's post.

[crucifiction 752]

Actually, as far as I know the best ways to fix this problem are:

1. Remove C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT and restart the system (works in most cases) 

2. Create a new account for the user that has the problem with displaying fonts.

Edited June 21, 2016 by man_of_the_oak

[Licio123 181]

Well, 2 days passed and no signs of the problem.... yet. Hope its stays that way XD

[kai_desu 340]

Well, 2 days passed and no signs of the problem.... yet. Hope its stays that way XD

That's good but... which method did you use that fixed the problem for you? XD

[TheBistroButcher666 228]

FUCK! Working great using Kai's method AND NOW IT'S FUCKED AGAIN D:

[Licio123 181]

Well, 2 days passed and no signs of the problem.... yet. Hope its stays that way XD

That's good but... which method did you use that fixed the problem for you? XD

I tried yours, kai. It screwed up again, but it seems like it's less often than before

Anyway, thx for the help!

[RUTEN NO TOU 7]

@OP

Like Kai said, reset your font selection in windows to default

2- then select English as default location and etc etc (if you're a japanese lang user then select japanese)

Also as a fact, uninstall any fonts you don't use and see if that fixes the problem, if not then i don't know what the f- is wrong wit ur comp lol.

oh and also, check to see if your Language For Non-Unicode Programs is set to English or Japanese

Check those two out and test it.. maybe that will fix your problems

Now as for problems make a new user, or if you made a normal Admin user activate the real Administrator user and move your stuff (music, vids, pics and AppData folder too!! ) to that user (note, you cannot delete the Admin account due to it being like the Root equiv in Linux.. its teh Master Hand of users)

after thats done check if your problem if fixed, if it is then delete your old user account (or keep it just in case you're paranoid) and now keep the real admin account !!