Garbled Text/Symbols on random websites - Chrome

I use Mac OS X 10.5.8 and run Firefox and Chrome. Firefox has stopped working altogether, and crashes about 20 seconds after I open it every time. Chrome is working pretty well but occasionally it will either come up with a blue page saying that something went wrong, or display a page like the one attached. I'm not sure why this is; all my other programs are running normally. Does anybody have an idea what could be causing this?

View > Encoding

Try some of the the different options.

I am having the exact same problem - also Mac OSX 10.5.8, though Firefox is working fine for me. Chrome is giving me random strings of characters on a lot of pages, and otherwise giving me the "oops!" page a lot.

Alternate encoding options didn't fix it. Anyone know what the problem is?

this exact thing is happening to me as well. firefox crashes after 30 seconds and chrome gives me garbled text and lots of "aw snap" error pages. i even first noticed the garbled text on nytimes.com as well. I use Mac OS X 10.5.8. Any updates on how this might be fixed