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pound sign displaying as J


doveman

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I've got a problem where the pound sign isn't displaying properly. I've had this once before and I think I ending up reinstalling XP (Pro SP2) because I couldn't find any way to fix it. I really don't want to have to do that again. I've only just reloaded from a True Image backup and whilst there isn't a vast amount of software installed, it takes time to tweak everything to how I like it.

The symptoms I'm seeing are:

1. If I create a new text document and enter some characters (including £), when I go to save it, it says "The file contains characters in Unicode format which will be lost if you save this file as an ANSI encoded text file." If I save in ANSI format, it changes any £ to ?.

It didn't used to do this, so either it must have been saving in Unicode format by default or a problem's developed with ANSI format.

2. Some webpages show J instead of £. For instance, Amazon's homepage shows £ okay but if I go to a product page, all the £ now show as J.

3. Some e-mails show in Eudora with J instead of £

I've checked the Regional and Language settings and Standards and Formats is set to "English (United Kingdom)" and Location is set to "United Kingdom" and Language for non-Unicode programs is set to "English (United Kingdom)". The Default input language is set to "English (United Kingdom) - United Kingdom" and the only things shown under Installed services are "English (United Kingdom) - Keyboard - United Kingdom".

I've listed the fonts installed below in case one of those is causing the problem but I don't know which ones are safe to uninstall. It would be great if anyone can help me fix this and it would be good to know what's causing it in case it ever happens again.

arial.ttf

arialbd.ttf

arialbi.ttf

ariali.ttf

ariblk.ttf

comic.ttf

comicbd.ttf

cour.ttf

courbd.ttf

courbi.ttf

couri.ttf

estre.ttf

framd.ttf

framdit.ttf

gautami.ttf

georgia.ttf

georgiab.ttf

georgiai.ttf

georgiaz.ttf

impact.ttf

kartika.ttf

l_10646.ttf

latha.ttf

lsans.ttf

lsansd.ttf

lsansdi.ttf

lsansi.ttf

lucon.ttf

mangal.ttf

micross.ttf

modern.fon

mvboli.ttf

pala.ttf

palab.ttf

palabi.ttf

palai.ttf

raavi.ttf

roman.fon

script.fon

shruti.ttf

sylfaen.ttf

symbol.ttf

tahoma.ttf

tahomabd.ttf

times.ttf

timesbd.ttf

timesbi.ttf

timesi.ttf

trebuc.ttf

trebucbd.ttf

trebucbi.ttf

trebucit.ttf

tt7268m_802.ttf

tunga.ttf

verdana.ttf

verdanab.ttf

verdanai.ttf

verdanaz.ttf

vrinda.ttf

webdings.ttf

wingding.ttf

wst_czec.fon

wst_engl.fon

wst_fren.fon

wst_germ.fon

wst_ital.fon

wst_span.fon

wst_swed.fon

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Just some further info that hopefully might point to the cause of the problem. Although I've just had a corrupt system32\config\SYSTEM file which was preventing me booting XP and I had to replace it with an old one which has fixed the problem now, so unfortunately I won't be able to test anyone's ideas out.

I deleted some of the non-standard fonts, which didn't make any difference.

After reading around, I checked the settings in IE and for some reason, under Internet Options - Fonts, Language Script was set to Cyrillic. I could change it to Latin based but it wouldn't stick (IE was back on Cyrillic when I went back to check) and made no difference to my problem.

In notepad, the problem was present using any font with an O or TT preceeding it. I did notice that the Script setting for these was set to Cyrillic but although changing it to Western did stick, it didn't make any difference. Only using the few fonts (Courier, MS Sans Serif) that didn't have an O or TT preceeding them, did the £ display OK. These happen to be fonts for which the only Script setting is Western.

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O is OpenType (preferred) and TT is True Type. The ones without a symbol before it are SYSTEM fonts. Check out Character Map (charmap.exe) to see if the correct symbols show up there as well. Some applications cannot make use of extended character sets or entire fonts and can show the incorrect character or in most cases will show a square. Don't worry about uninstalling any fonts.

The common cause of this is that documents were created in one encoding format and decoded incorrectly in the one you are using. This page explains this issue among different distros of Windows:

http://www.firstobject.com/dn_markansifile.htm

http://www.mihai-nita.net/article.php?artID=20051030a

I can't find anything to try atm, but I remember this type of a problem happening in a support call 8 years ago. I'll have to think about this for a bit to see if I can remember what to look up.

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Thanks for the info.

If you do remember anything else, it would be great to have to hand in case it ever happens again. Whilst it doesn't occur that often (probably last saw it about a year ago) and I do have Ghost backups to hand if all else fails, it's always nice to be able to fix something and know what caused the problem in the first place.

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