Weird text glitch in volume mixer

[dferdsg]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[dferdsg]

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

 

[fireberd]

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

 

[Borg 386]

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]

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]

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?

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]

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.

 

[dferdsg]

Still did not find a solution, and even worse, now they appear on my brand new laptop too. I did not install anything out of the ordinary on my laptop. Hopeless...

 

[Teerex]

I see this too often on my laptop, an it has nothing to do with Foobar. It is either a Windows bug (more probable) or a Realtek driver bug (less probable). The tooltip displayed for the sound source doesn't have that square.

 

[dferdsg]

I re-installed Windows 7 and the squares where there again, BUT I got rid of them now. It seems the solution, for me anyway, was to delete the file FNTCACHE.DAT in Windows\System32 and restart.
I tried this before re-installing windows 7 but it did not work, this time however it worked. For two weeks now I'm free of the squares and Chinese characters are displayed correctly too in explorer.
Yes it seems the problem with Chinese characters displayed as squares in explorer and the squares in mixer volume are going hand in hand and is a bug in windows 7 font cache or something...

 

[spotify95]

I also have this squares problem, like yours. It has the squares on all volume mixer sliders, and appears most of the time. However, at the start, just after bootup, if I click the volume mixer BEFORE I play any audio, they don't appear. Why is this, and how do I remove them? Also I have heard that deleting the font cache can result in BSOD, I have had enough BSODS on my computer (even though its only 1 yr old!) so is it safe to delete it?
Thank you
spotify95

 

[dferdsg]

I had exactly the same behavior as you described and yes, by deleting that file was the only way I got rid of them for good.

 

[spotify95]

Will that file re-appear in the system32 folder after the restart? Im just a bit concerned that I do not want to ruin anything, since the system32 folder is needed for the O/S, and I do not want to ruin the laptop.... and you are sure that it is safe to do?
Thank you
Spotify95

 

[spotify95]

By the way, this is the screenshot of what I am getting.
Is it safe to delete that fntcache.dat file?

Thank you

Spotify95

 

[dferdsg]

Well from my experience by deleting it from my main PC and laptop (I had the squares on both, the PC and laptop), it was not a problem because it was recreated after restart. But if somethings goes wrong, which is unlikely, don't make me responsible!

 

[spotify95]

Those funny squares have came up again, even though the laptop had to perform some windows updates yesterday, hoping they would cure it!! Anyway, will try deleting the fntcache.dat and will see what happens.

 

[spotify95]

Okay, I deleted the file and restarted. After nervously waiting for the re-boot, I found out that the system did indeed re-create the font cache after the computer was restarted.
Argh!!! The square boxes are still there!!! What do I do now? (P.S. I have no windows disk, so re-install isn`t an option)