illegible file names

All file names are illegible and look like compressed text with jagged vertical lines. I lost my Restore points and could not go back to an earlier point. I may have been low on disk space. Could this be a hard drive issue of running out of space ?
I am running Windows Me.

Thanks for comments.

 

I haven't used WinME in a looong time, but I would first check the display settings and the font settings. Maybe something there is out of whack. If the problem is with all text, and not just file names, but everything including title bars and message windows, then it is likely a settings issue somewhere, or possibly a video driver problem. Download a fresh copy of your video driver, uninstall the current one, reboot, then install the new driver and see if that helps.
Good luck!

 

Thanks for comments.
I tried both font size, and uninstall and reinstall from original video disk with no luck.
Problem is also on browser toolbars and address bar.
At the time problem began I had unplugged monitor cable from video card and after replugged it. Could this have any affect on problem ? Damage to video card ?

 

It's possible that something got changed to use a different language and the character set for that particular language has not been installed. For example: if I go to a Chinese web site on my PC, all I see are a bunch of small empty boxes and a few other meaningless symbols because I don't have the Chinese language character set installed. You can also try using the built-in registry repair/restore tool; click Start, click Run, and type scanreg /restore and press Enter; note the space before the slash /. This command should bring up a list of options and you can select from a list of registry backups based on date and time, and restore the registry to the selected backup. You can also try running scanreg /fix which repairs damage to the registry's internal data structures and compacts it.

If there was damage to the video card, you'd notice problems on everything being displayed on the screen, not just file names, toolbars, and the address bar. I really think that there's a strange font setting somewhere. Go to the Control Panel > Display > Appearance > Advanced and check the font settings for EVERYTHING available. I don't have a WinME computer handy this info is from XP, but it should be relatively similar in ME....

Good luck!!!!

 

Thanks dlb, I got my file names back using Appearance
icon horizontal spacing.

Buttons (min, max, restore), dialog, checkboxes, and
checkmarks have weird characters.
I don't have Marlett, Modern, Symbols, Wing Dings.

Thanks for suggestions.

 

I found the missing files including marlett with the extensions fon and ttf, but i don't know what to do with them. They open up as a page of characters.

Thanks for help.

 

Marlett contains symbols, squares, that would be used for check boxes, min max restore boxes. The other files contain letters of alphabet, numbers. All files are in the fonts folder except MODERN, which shows up in Search for files within C:\windows\fonts folder. But when I double click on the fonts folder its not there.

Thanks for help.