Is there a large font virus?

Hi all! Need some help with a problem on mom's old pc...

Certain fonts on her Windows Me pc are permanently huge. (And no, the control key/mouse wheel thing does not fix it!) Not all fonts are huge, just a few. For example, on CNN's homepage, everything's fine except the search button. The word SEARCH is so big that the CH doesn't even show on the button. Changing the font size (which is currently set to smallest) does affect all of the other fonts the way you'd expect, but the word SEARCH doesn't change.

This has been happening for well over a year now. She just got a new pc, and I took this old one for my small business. I figured I'd be able to fix the font problem by the usual methods (View -->Text Size in IE, updating the graphics card driver, changing the fonts in the Appearance tab in Display Properties, etc.), but absolutely nothing I did fixed the problem.

I then went through every step in the Read Me Before Asking for Help page, and to my surprise, only a few viruses were found. I figured she was infested, because she had no protection at all, and the pc would often crash or freeze & was often ridiculously slow. The crashing & slowness are gone now, but the huge font thing remains.

Anyway, I'm wondering if this is the result of some virus, or should I be posting in a different forum?

TIA...

Megan in Michigan

 

Will do right now. Thanks for the quick repsonse!

 

I'm patient; I appreciate your help whether it's fast or slow!

I'm attaching my HJT log, but unfortunately, it may not be useful because I'm using GoToMyPC right now to access this computer. I don't know if you're familiar with it... ?? But I couldn't shut it down before I ran HJT, because I'd be disconnected, so I just ran HJT with it running. I shut everything else down, though.

Megan

 

OK, cool.. I'll fix & reboot as suggested.

Just curious - I only just got your reply, and you posted it well over an hour ago. I've been monitoring the New Posts page, and periodically going to the post itself, but nothing has changed until a minute ago. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe monitoring the wrong place? I have email alerts setup but I figure watching the site itself is the same difference. Does it take a while for posts to appear sometimes?

Will post HJT log asap.

 

New log

 

So it's not just me... that's good to know.

 

The ewido thing looks interesting. I'll do it when I am physically at the computer, because I obviously can't do it using GoToMyPC. It'll probably be about an hour before my next reply. Thanks for hangin in there with me!

 

Hmmm... Ewido won't setup because it says it need Windows 2000 or above to operate. This pc has Windows Me. So I guess 2000 and millenium are not the same?!? How odd. Any ideas?

 

I can do better than a picture... GoToMyPC has a thing that allows me to invite you to my desktop for a specified amount of time. That way, you would be able to see & do exactly what I'm talking about, my settings, etc. (I obviously trust you, this is giving you complete access to my computer.) It requires nothing from you (no registration or anything at all) except that you read the email I send you & follow the instructions. I don't know what they say, exactly, but most likely it'll tell you to go to the GoToMyPC homepage, login with the temporary username & password that they give you in the email, and you'll be taken right to my desktop. It's freaky.. At least it was for me the first few times I did it.

Anyway, I promise it's absolutely safe and absolutely non-invasive (for you at least!), other than the fact that I'd need your email address to send the invitation. If you're not comfortable with any part of that, let me know & I'll do the paint thing.

Megan

p.s. I kinda want to try out this feature of GoToMyPC, that's why I'm not just doing the easier thing - a screenshot.

 

Uh, OK... How would I do that?

 

OK, did it.

 

Please do the following things for me.

Download, install and run EVEREST Home Edition

When you run the program do the following:

Click-on Report in the File Menu

Select Report Wizard

Click-on Next

Click-on System Summary Only

Click-on Next

Click-on Plain Text

Click-on Finish

Click-on Save To File

Browse to My Documents

Accept the default file name, close the report wizard and everest. POst the report as an attachement.

Download and install Process Explorer.

After you have it installed, run the program;

Click-on File

Select Save as

Save the file to My Documents.

Post the report as an attachment.

Post a screen shot; showing the abnormally large text and boxes.

 

Will do! Thanks.

 

Here are the reports; do I post the screenshot the same way - as an attachment to a post?

 

As long as the screenshot is under 97kb you can post it as an attachment or image.

 

It was 477kb... I tried to reduce the size but it became unrecognizable. I'm going to crop the image down to just the important parts now. It should be the right size. I'll post it asap.

 

If you want to post the entire image, you can use an Image hosting service like ImageShack.

 

OK, hopefully this is ok. It's actually 2 screenshots - a login screen with my username almost too big to even see, and on the right is the search box on cnn's site. I have the text size in IE set to smallest for both of these!

 

If you don't already have Firefox installed please install it, and see if it behaves the same as IE. This way we can determine if it is a system problem or an IE specific problem.

 

Don't have Firefox on this pc, but I'll do as you said & report back in a sec.

 

Wow, the problem is gone with Firefox! I went to both of the places that were on my screenshot, and they were totally normal. AOL isn't normal, though... It gives me the same stuff as IE. Maybe it runs through IE?

Anyway, what can I do next?

 

AOL uses IE as their default bowser. Unistall IE6 rolling back to 5.5, then reinstall IE6 w/SP1

 

Alrighty, I'll do it now.

 

out of curiosity, what are her desktop parameters set as ..ie. Desktop style, theme etc.. more specifically, check, font sizes. Try resetting the appearance scheme and or theme.

 

Thanks Kodo, I didn't even think about that.

 

All the settings are completely normal. I have windows default appearance; haven't messed with any font sizes, and in the advanced area in display properties, I have 3 choices for font size - small, large or other. It's set to small (96dpi). d3m3nt3d logged onto my pc and checked all of those settings as well.

In other news... I'm posting from another computer b/c I got a bsod when I clicked "restart my computer" after IE uninstalled itself. Help!

 

What was the BSOD error message?

 

Error: OE: 017F: BFF8E64B Also said pressing ctrl-alt-del again will restart you computer, and press any key to continue. I did that, and the same screen came up again. Did it again & the screen went black except for my mouse pointer, which I could move around without a problem. Tried Ctrl-alt-del couple of times, but nothing... So I restarted via the power button. Shall I go on?

 

When you restarted the computer, what happened? Any strange errors? Do you now have IE 5.5?

 

If you have the Windows ME CD available, reinstall right over the top of you Windows ME iInstallation; ME is 'Dirty' install friendly.

 

Well, it did scandisk, and actually found some errors; said it fixed em, and asked me if I wanted to restart. But even as that was happening, scandisk was still running right behind it, and it finished after a minute, and then a little window with a pic of a drum roll appeared and said something about configuring new settings on Millenium Edition. The "do you want to restart" window was still there, I chose to ignore it & see what happened with the configuring. Next, the drum thing stopped and a window came up that said there was an error loading c/windows/system/shdocvw.dll, that it must be corrupt or missing... I said OK, and the same window popped up. At that point, I pressed OK to restart on that other window. Result: screen froze with only my desktop's background visible. Nice microsoft clouds, but nothing else for like 10 minutes. I turned off the pc w/ the power button, waited a bit, then started it again, and now everything loaded up just fine! I haven't tested anything yet, as I've been writing this post as it was rebooting.

 

Yes, I now have IE 5.5... And...


The huge font thing is still there!

 

I know it's late, but does anyone wanna logon to my pc via GoToMyPC?

 

I'm not sure how much that would help at this point. Reinstall IE 6.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1e1550cb-5e5d-48f5-b02b-20b602228de6&DisplayLang=en

 

Sorry SPD, I didn't see your post til just now.

I'm not sure if I have the Win ME CD. I know I don't have it here with me & the pc, but it may still be at my mom's house. It's a Dell, and I'm sure they sent it along w/ the pc when she bought it. Whether or not she KEPT it is another story.

So I can just reinstall the whole thing on TOP of itself? Will I lose any files or programs? That's not a big deal, I just need to do some backups first. I intended to do a clean install after I fixed this font thing, anyway. (If I could find the Win Me disk.)

I'll have to continue this tomorrow, after I try to find the Me disk. Thanks so much for everyone's help thus far....

 

I will reinstall IE 6.

 

Yes, you can reinstall ME right over the top of ME and keep your settings. It's like doing a repair install in XP. Don't think yo need to do that now that you have gotten back into ME. After you get IE6 reinstalled, try uninstalling AOL and reinstall it.

 

Hi there... I'm back!


Here's the latest problem... I tried to install IE 6 (from my current IE 5.5), but it shuts down a few seconds after starting, with the Error Reporting window popping up telling me "Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close..." etc. I then tired to get to the microsoft site with Firefox, but it says it's searching for a long time, then just keeps giving me a "cannot display this page" window. The strange thing is, I AM connected to the internet. I know this because I have an icon in my system tray that tells me this, and it's ALWAYS right.
Where do I go from here? Puter Dude? You out there?

 

Please download HOSTER and then follow the below steps.

• Unzip Hoster to a convenient folder such as C:\Hoster

• Run Hoster.exe, click Restore Original Hosts and then click OK.
• Click the X to exit the program.

 

I should have mentioned that I'm using a different pc to get online right now. The one with the font problem is here, too, but I can't get online, as neither Firefox nor IE will let me. And as I said earlier, I know I'm connected because of my taskbar icon thing, but for some reason I can't get there. Does that make sense? Any advise? Maybe use good pc to put Hoster on a disk & put disk in bad pc?

 

OK, I figured it out. I ran Hoster & restored original hosts.

 

Sorry, was cooking dinner. Did that fix it?

 

That's ok - I was eating dinner.

No, that didn't fix it. I restarted the pc, still not fixed. Maybe I'll disconnect it from my cable modem for a couple of seconds.

 

If that doesn't work try this Winsock XP Fix

 

OK, this is just weird. I'm able to do instant messaging, but my actual browsers can't seem to get to any pages.

 

OK, I'll try Winsock.

 

What firewall are you running?

 

Success! But the damn font is still huge. Oh dear.

 

Firewall... let's see... You'd think I'd know this, but it's not my main pc.... A-squared is running, but is that a firewall?

 

Unistall AOL, or have you already done that?