Default desktop font has gone whacko

WinXP SP3 - I'm working on a PC that had a clean install of WinXP SP3 installed about a week ago (HD was de-partitioned, re-partitioned, and then formatted)... now all the desktop shortcuts (and most -but not all- of everything else) has had the default XP font changed to either the "WingDings" font or some other font of just symbols. This makes 95% of all text and fonts in Windows completely useless and unreadable. Most (but not all) title bars are in a normal font that is completely readable, so (for example) in the blue title bar of "My Computer" it will actually read normally, but all other text in that window will be symbols or 'wing-dings'. I booted to the UBCD4Win which allows for 'remote' viewing of registry keys, but all the default font keys are as they should be. Granted, I haven't done any malware scans yet, but all preliminary manual checks point to a clean PC, but I may be wrong (however, I am VERY adept at finding/removing malware via a preinstall environment, and running or installing any anti-malware tools will be VERY tricky or impossible without being able to read any text). The PCs owner brought me the PC 2 or 3 days ago saying that her USB flash drive wouldn't work, but when it was plugged in, it worked fine, as did 2 other flash drive, a USB mouse and USB keyboard, and at that time there were no problems with fonts or anything else....

OK - enough of the boring background story... how would I fix a WinXP serious font problem? Preferably via a PECD, but if I have to boot to a desktop where I can't read at least 95% of all text, I'll do it!

 

I've come across this once before and the only solution found was to do a clean install as finding the culprit was impossible. Maybe someone else can shed some more light, I hope so.

 

Yeah - I checked that same reg key via the remote registry option on the UBCD4Win, and it appeared to be fine, but I'll try using your attachment too.... I've also tried a System Restore from an ERD boot disc and it simply closes right after I hit click on "Start System Restore" which is a bit odd. I'm in the process of backing up the data right now 'cuz I have a strong feeling that a clean install is in the very near future.

 

As I said to begin with. Sorry that it came to that.

 

:dood :dancer :celebrate
Problem solved w/o formatting the drive! As a last ditch effort, I booted the laptop next to another system running a clean WinXP. Since I couldn't read anything on the laptop, I had to compare with the system running next to it. I managed to launch System Restore and roll back about 2 weeks, and now all is well!! I've run some malware scans which came up clean, and I'm going to run a HD and RAM diagnostic to try to figure out how the font got all whacked out in the first place. The owner of the laptop is not very good at describing issues, so I'm not really sure what exactly occurred before the weirdness, but she says "it just came up like that" which I have a VERY hard time believing.

 

All malware scans came up clean, all hardware diagnostics passed 100%, no problems were observed in the event viewer.... in other words, I could nothing that may have caused this. I'm 97% sure it was something with the PCs owner, but she is so poor at describing any events that asking her about it is truly worthless and a waste of time.