Windows 7: Chinese characters display as squares in text editors

Issue: All Chinese characters I try to view in text editors are being displayed as squares.



I can view the file in a browser (Chrome) and the Chinese characters appear correctly, but in text editors they are squares.

Background: I recently installed Windows 7 Service Pack 1 along with many other updates. I had not been installing any updates (yeah I know) but I wanted to be able to edit files with Chinese characters in them, so I installed all the available updates.

After I restarted the first time, I was delighted to see that the characters which were squares before were now legible Chinese characters. However, when I restarted again, the characters were back to squares.

I checked for updates and saw a few optional updates were available. I installed them, restarted, and the characters were back to being legible. I restarted again and the characters returned to being squares.

Now there are no available updates and the characters still display as squares. This happens no matter what text editor I use, be it Notepad++, Sublime Text, or plain old Notepad. The file is encoded with UTF-8 (it's been that way during both when I could see the characters and when I couldn't). It also happens no matter what font I use.

How can I fix this issue?

My chinese word suddenly appear as Square box

Ah thanks, creating a new account worked. No idea why though, but thanks.