All squares in Skype Help please

[happyhero]

Hi my stepfather has a PC with XP home on it and he went to use Skype but all the characters and I mean all of them, you know all the menues, the words at the top like FILE, ACCOUNT, HELP etc are all squares, all the chracters have been replaced with black lined squares, can anybody help?

I uninstalled it for him and went to the Skype site and downloaded and installed the latest one but it was exactly the same.

I would appreciate any advice.

 

[daozen]

OK. Exit Skype go to Start>Run and type Type: %appdata% delete folder "Skype" in the window that appears. Re-run Skype and log in as normal. That should fix it.

 

[happyhero]

OK. Exit Skype go to Start>Run and type Type: %appdata% delete folder "Skype" in the window that appears. Re-run Skype and log in as normal. That should fix it.

Ok cheers daozen, sounds promising, I have to wait until I go to see him in a couple of days (it would be too much like pulling teeth to try and talk him through even that) but I will try that, out of interest if that works, what has gone wrong and what does that do that solves it?

 

[daozen]

appdata is where programs sort info relevant for the user in question. Something has corrupted it so deleting it means that the program needs to write new user settings.

 

[smileyclaire]

Hi there,

I seem to be having exactly the same problem however I tried - run and %appdata% but still no joy.
Please can someone reccommend something else or let me know if the above has worked for them.

Thanks

 

[tim west]

sounds like the app can't find the font associated with it

 

[joinerjohn]

I reckon your father has changed the language setting to chinese. On the menu bar at the top it should say skype then have a series of 6 sets of squares. Go to the 5th set along then 2nd down on the drop down menu. Should come up with the languages. Select English, hit stepfather over head with newspaper and tell him not to mess with the settings ever again