Weird text glitch in volume mixer

dferdsg · 03 Jan 2011

Hi,
I have a weird text glitch in volume mixer and don't know why it happens. See attachment.

The squares!

I'm talking about the square like character "[]" after the text "system sounds" and "foobar2000".

I am using X-FI sound card with recent drivers and have all the windows updates installed.
Un fortunately I did not find an explanation searching for it on google and on forums.
Anyone has an idea what causes this glitch?

fireberd · 03 Jan 2011

You have apparently installed the Foobar 2000 media player. Uninstall it if you don't want or need it. I've seen this attached to some other downloaded programs and you have to uncheck a box or it will install.

dferdsg · 03 Jan 2011

Thanks for the reply.
Foobar is my music player of choice and it's not the cause of the squares. These squares sometimes are there from a fresh boot, sometimes they appear after some time using the pc, sometimes never but most of the time they are there...I don't think foobar has anything to do with it.

fireberd · 03 Jan 2011

Oh, are you talking about the dotted line around the Speakers Device? I have no idea why that is there.

dferdsg · 03 Jan 2011

No, i'm talking about the square like character "[]" after the text "system sounds" and "foobar2000"

fireberd · 03 Jan 2011

That looks sort of like a font issue. Whatever font that is, could be corrupted.

Borg 386 · 04 Jan 2011

More then likely the font character they used cannot be displayed in the system font.

Either that, or as fireberd said, corrupted font. Or the program is written with a flaw in the coding pertaining to the display

dazco · 04 Jan 2011

You wanna talk bizarre, my mixer at times will present sliders for non audio apps ! Like volume slider for a graphics editor or other such non audio apps. Weird ! They go away tho and i haven't seen that for a while now. I have a audigy 2 ZS.

dferdsg · 05 Jan 2011

Thanks for the reply guys, but how can the standard font be corrupted ? And if it's corrupted why it doesn't show this "[]" character all the time?

Borg 386 said:

More then likely the font character they used cannot be displayed in the system font.

Who do you mean with "they"? These squares are after every software name in the volume mixer whether they are from microsoft or some 3'rd party's...
Yesterday the volume mixer was fine, today the characters are back...sadly, I can't explain it.

Borg 386 · 05 Jan 2011

If you're using a 3rd party software (Foobar), sometimes programs will not integrate 100% with Windows. This can cause the kind of problems you're seeing.

You could uninstall it and see if the problem disappears. Depending how much it integrated with the drivers that may fix it.

It would probably be a good idea to run a full system scan with an AV or Malwarebytes just to be sure, but I've seen this kind of behavior before with certain 3rd party software and, short of uninstalling it, if it's not causing any problems and there is no malware/viruses present, then there should be nothing to worry about.

You could also run a SFC /Scannow to see if it finds any problems and can fix them.