Arabic text appears randomly through-out WinXP

The title pretty much explains it all.... screen shots attached..... I've looked thru all the language and regional settings and have found nothing that would be responsible. The OS is WinXP Pro SP3.

Thanks!

 

so in language settings, it's set to english?

 

Yup. Everything is set to English & US. Screens attached.

 

I would definetly check the system for viruses and spyware. What programs do you have installed for such an act?

 

You've had this problem before and your advice was to do a safe XP install. Although, this looks a bit more pervasive.

 

I'm running malware scans as we speak, and yes, I've had a similar problem before, and yes, a repair install worked in that scenario. However, this time things are MUCH more pervasive as stated above. The owner of the laptop had NO protection other than an 2 year old expired version McAfee. He said he "tried to install AVG" but I saw no evidence of AVG; I would have removed it anyway since IMO the new AVG2011 is a huge pile of :crap. So- a MBAM scan is running, and other scans are planned depending on the outcome of MBAM.....

 

The 1st screen shot in post #3 is from the "Details" button in the "Language" tab's window. And, no, nothing is listed besides English/US.

 

:cry Yup - there's malware. There's this new thing I've been seeing A LOT of lately, the "WhiteSmoke Translator". I think it's a 'toolbar' but it seems to be more of a redirect hijack. It opens ad-based web sites when you try to surf. You can simply close the pages that open, but it continues to redirect to a new ad page about every 60-90 seconds. I've seen this same behavior on about 5 different PCs in the past week or so, and EACH ONE had this "WhiteSmoke" on it, and none of the users installed it (actually, only one of 'em even knew what it was; the others didn't even know it was there). Hopefully the Arabic will be removed after the malware scan(s).

So - I might be in the Malware forum later. :banghead

(but I'm getting pretty good at removing the nasties LOL )

 

I would run a maleware scan more than once to make sure the system is clean. I would worry about a rootkit. Also run a virus scan just in case. Avast or Avira are my favorites.

also, run this tool from Kaspersky

 

All malware has been removed, but this did NOT get rid of the Arabic text. I had to perform a safe non-destructive re-install of Windows XP and that did it. I have advised the client to back up all his important data to flash drive, CD/DVD, whatever so we can wipe the drive clean and install a fresh clean Windows. The laptop is used primarily as a work PC and was full of Excel docs, Word docs, various Adobe docs, etc. Anyway- all is well for the time being. Thanks for all the input everyone!

 

I just saw this exact thing after i recovered a system from a nasty rootkit. It BSOD at every boot even safe mode. It is a XP MCE Laptop and i used MSDart ERD Commander for XP, ran the system file scan and it replaced a couple of system files in \system32.
Then it booted fine, Malwarebytes cleaned up the rest of the system, 2-3 scans with reboots until it came up clean. But i still had the same arabic? text on some of the menus and CPL icons. Firewall, Wireless, and several menus, including all the the dialog boxes and prompts when downloading files. PITA. Ran a disk cleanup, CHKDSK /r and a defrag then installed SP3 for XP. After the reboot everyting was back to normal.
The user had AVG Free and some "fixIT" tools installed, IE6 and way behind on updates, which may explain how it got this way.

Installing Kaspersky Antivirus and all updates, the system runs like as good as it can with a celeron and 1GB of DDR2 4200.