Is this an OSX Virus?

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I can't use my Mac anymore! All the text on my desktop has been corrupted. Instead of normal, legible text, everything has become a series of Capital 'A' letters within a square bounding box. Including menu/task-bar items. Whenever I try to access a sub-menu from all this gobbledegook, all the drop-down menus appear likewise. Upper-case 'A's within square boxes. Whenever I open applications, they seem to run fine, but my menu options are unavailable to me because of said problem.
I'm running OS10.4.6 on a dual 2.8g G5, and it seems that it's only the text native to the OS that's affected, (and everything that relates to it, eg, the title bar of any application that I open). Has anyone come across this before? What may have caused it, and how the hell do I correct it?
Thanks.
 
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Thanks for the suggestion.
I've downloaded the software you suggested, but can't really make head nor tail of it; the font corruption affects the download folder once accessed in the desktop and I can't tell what I'm installing. I think the best idea would be to try and reinstall the fonts; what's the most risk-free way of doing this as I don't really want to re-install the complete OS for fear of losing important work. Is the fonts folder on the 1st or 2nd Installation disk, and what's the best way to go about this?
So many questions, I know, but I really am in a corner!
 
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You can try an archive and install from your original installer disc. That just moves old files aside without deleting them, and installs a fresh system and retains many of your preference settings; you start the computer from the system disc by holding the "c" key during computer startup, and allow the computer to boot from the disc. Chances are you have a newer system installed than the disc, so the disc icon will be have a red x through it. However, hit the options button at that point and you'll see the check-boxes to allow archive and install. I'd still backup anything possible in advance if you can, just in case there's some kind of disc error that can't be repaired. I've done the archive/install thing several times and never had a problem, though. After the archive and install process, run all the OS updates, then check your removed system files for third-party (non-Apple) files that might not have moved to their proper location on their own. You might lose some serial numbers for third-party apps, too, and have to put the numbers back in. I'm not sure you can access just the fonts from the installer disc; there's an operating system on the OS cd disc itself that enables the disc-startup process, and you could try pulling fonts from there and replace the ones in the system folder; however, you'll probably get a file-in-use error for some of them and not be able to do the swap, so my thinking is the archive-and-install would work better.
 
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I'm getting angry now!
Have tried Archive and Reinstall of OS10.4, keep getting a message that "Reinstall has failed, please try again". No matter however many times I try, it never works.
Have tried repairing Disk Permissions; doesn't make any difference.
Whenever I attempt "Repair Disk", I keep getting a message that Mac HD needs repairing, leading everytime to a red "Could Not Repair Mac HD" message.
What's odd is that wnenever I do a click/Enter procedure on one of the files that I've created, the underlying text appears as normal, within a blue shroud, ready to be edited. Whenever I click back to the desktop, this file index then reverts to its cloaked state, ie, a string of square-bounded "A"s.
I am outside my warranty period, and am reluctant to spend a lot of money on a rescue phone-session that may turn out to take only a couple of minutes.
Does anyone have any idea what I can do?
(I really don't want to do a complete delete & re-install of the OS as my system is very sensitively set up, and to risk upsetting it would mean curtains for me.)
 
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Hello,
I'm experiencing the same problem. Have you figured out a solution to what you are experiencing? I'm including a screen shot to show others the problem.

screen_shot.jpg
 
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jepler,
The good news is that the problem's now fixed and I've got a healthy-looking desktop again; the bad news, (for me), is that I had to talk to Apple to fix it, and you probably know that doesn't come cheap.
I was told the corruption was probably the result of interruption in the power supply, or from having to reboot a frozen computer, both of which had, in fact, happened not long before the problem arose, so, beware everybody!
The solution was to start-up in Safe Mode via the Install Disk; (load the disk and after hearing the welcome chime, hold down the Shift Key until the Whirring Wheel finishes its stuff), and follow on-screen instructions from the Options to Verify, then Repair your hard drive, and ultimately perform an Archive & Install.
For some reason, I couldn't perform an Archive & Install from my Mac Hard Drive - I kept getting seriously red error messages - I could only do this by using the Install Disk.
It's not, however, a virus. You'll be glad to know that!
Hope this works for you.
 
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jepler,
The good news is that the problem's now fixed and I've got a healthy-looking desktop again; the bad news, (for me), is that I had to talk to Apple to fix it, and you probably know that doesn't come cheap.
I was told the corruption was probably the result of interruption in the power supply, or from having to reboot a frozen computer, both of which had, in fact, happened not long before the problem arose, so, beware everybody!
The solution was to start-up in Safe Mode via the Install Disk; (load the disk and after hearing the welcome chime, hold down the Shift Key until the Whirring Wheel finishes its stuff), and follow on-screen instructions from the Options to Verify, then Repair your hard drive, and ultimately perform an Archive & Install.
For some reason, I couldn't perform an Archive & Install from my Mac Hard Drive - I kept getting seriously red error messages - I could only do this by using the Install Disk.
It's not, however, a virus. You'll be glad to know that!
Hope this works for you.

It can be worse when you have to reboot or lose power.

The problem I had down below came when I was backing up my internal drive and it crashed. Because it happened during writing my user information files on the back-up were corrupted and I couldn't successfully boot off the external drive. I ended up having to reinstall and archive (but without saving user settings because that was what was corrupt) to get back going.

I'm still moving photos, music and movies out of the previous system archive to get back to normal.
 
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Thank you! The Archive & Install worked just like you said. I didn't need to perform the safe boot and repair, as I did this already using fsck earlier in the day. But I'm back in business!!

Appreciate it.
 

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