helphelphelp!!! what are these cap A's in boxes?????

[Liamsbusymama]

Hi,
I hope you know whats going on.

My Photoshop application would not open at all from the dock, I tried it from the actual application icon, it would not open. Tried opening other CS2 applications, and they will not open.

I thought I might have to reinstall those programs, but when I went to open a TextEdit doc. it also failed to open from the dock and the application icon.

I tried taking the icon off the doc, and noticed, with HORROR that all of the letters in the text that should say, Open, Remove from Dock, etc... are now represented by a capital "A" inside a square box, for each letter, in fact the top row of my computer as I type is all Asinboxes, as is all of the drop down menus.

I have OS X 10.4.11, 1.5Ghz, 512 Powerbook G4.

Am quite terrified... what do I do... should I move everything to my external harddrive, is there a risk of losing everything?

Have tried re-starting, and shutting down. Also, had a LOT of photos in iPhoto which I have moved off into my harddrive...

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[WheelerOnMac]

I'm having this exact same problem. My apps work okay, but all the menus just have capital A's in boxes, including the drop downs. The names of all icons are the same way.

If anyone knows how to correct this, help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Liamsbusymama]

my system ended up totally crashing. i would BACK UP IMMEDIATELY!!! I did not ( I had to reintall and archive my entire system.... hopefully yours wont get as bad... pls. let me know if you figure out whats gone on because no one responded to me and i still have no idea what went wrong

good luck!