why do many submenus show ?????? instead words?

Hi all,

several different programs suddenly show the symbols ?????? instead of words in their submenus. When knowing well a given program, I know what options are presented by these ?????, but when one does not know the word choices in a submenu, then it becomes difficult to use ANY program.

As several different programs now have this problem, and retain it even when reinstalled, this probelm must be related to windows. I guess that when a program is asked to show a submenu, it must make a call to some area of windows which is corrupt, and thus affects any program using this portion.

I have not tried to re-install windows 2000 advanced server as I suspect that I might run into many inconveniences. Thus the question:

anybody had a similar problem and was able to correct it without re-installing the whole system?

best,

Werner

 

Two things I'd try and in this order.

From a cmd prompt
chkdsk /r and ENTER. Answer Yes to doing the deed at next boot then reboot.

From a start -> run line
sfc /scannow (note the space after sfc)

If you have SP4 the system file checker will notice if a file to be replaced is original or from a later hotfix and get the replacement from the correct source. SP2 and earlier always used original files so you'd have to reapply all updates so make sure you have SP4 installed before doing the command.

 

Thanks Newt,

I did chkdsk /r and all was ok

I tried sfc /scannow , it asked for the installation CD but could not find what it needed.

I decided to reinstall windows 2000 advanced server (version 5, built 2195, service pack 4) with the option that installed programs remain functional.

Only a couple of programs did not work afterwards and had to be reinstalled.

The problem with symbols ???? appearing instead of words in submenus of several programs, however remained.

Werner

 

I tried sfc /scannow , it asked for the installation CD but could not find what it needed.

Not a good sign. I'm not sure exactly what is happening but I can say that if the server were mine, I would not trust the current OS load at all and would scrub the thing and start over.

Takes a few hours and not a lot of fun but .....