Junk Help Files

[MikeyC]

Hi,

Just upgraded to 7Book ('ray!) and have noticed an interesting thing. All of the help files on the machine are in some weird font. I think it some sort of 'symbol' font or such like. At first I thought just one or two of the help files were in some sort of cyrillic text, maybe installed from a foreign language version. Closer inspection reveals this not to be the case, and I would hazard that the machine is missing a required font to display the files correctly.

All of which of is great speculation, but doesn't help me in terms of fixing the fault. B.t.w.: I've never installed any additional fonts in addition to the pre-installed ones.

Suggestions?

Mike

[Jim Cooke]

Mikey,

I had a somewhat similar problem on my 5mx when all the help files were displayed in unreadably small fonts even at the highest zoom level. After fooling around with a lot of possible fixes, a hard reset was the only thing that did the trick. Apparently something gets corrupted in the Psion system font and a hard reset id the only way to fix it.

Regards, Jim

[MikeyC]

Jim,

Thanks for this. Did a bit more digging last night. If I cut and paste the contents from the card section of the help file (list view is fine) in to Psion Word and change the font to say Arial, it reads the text fine. At least I've found a workaround even if it's not ideal.

I may have been a little hasty in telling you I haven't installed any other fonts, because I have done, but forgotten about it. It was before I upgraded to a 7Book and I found the file 'maths.gdr' lurking on my CF card (which looks like the font the help files are in). I couldn't delete this on the psion as the file was in use and so did it on a card reader. However, this hasn't solved the problem, as I think the font may still be resident in memory. Consequently, your suggestion of a hard reset may be a viable one. I'm obviously loathe to do this, but if I back up before and restore after,what data should I lose?

I'm obviously a bad boy, having not tested that my backup strategy works.

Mike

[MikeMcC]

Consequently, your suggestion of a hard reset may be a viable one. I'm obviously loathe to do this, but if I back up before and restore after,what data should I lose? You shouldn't lose any data, but you might also restore the corruption you are trying to get rid of. You may have to reinstall your 'non-built-in' applications from their original .SIS files and copy from backup only your personal data files - Word, Sheet, Aganda etc. On the other hand, you could be lucky and a hard reset and restore will fix the problem.

If you have enough space on your CF card, you could do a full backup of your "C" drive by copying it to a new folder on "D" and, after the reset, just copy the contents of that folder back to "C" - much quicker than PsiWin. Just don't copy "C" to the root of "D" or (a) you will confuse the Psion's operating system and (b) you will probably confuse yourself not knowing which files belong to "C" and which to "D" :)

[MikeyC]

Thanks for the suggestion about the CF card, I wouldn't have thought of it. It also just so happens I have a spare 64MB CF card sat on my desk which should simplify the process, and avoid confusion. I am very easily confused :confused:

[MikeyC]

Yup, that's got it. Perhaps as Jim suggested, something has been corrupted and a hard reset has fixed it. However, given that the restore didn't bring back the problem, I think it may have been a rogue font in memory which was cleared out during the hard reset. Because it only existed in RAM, it was not restored. Not that it really matters given that it seems to have worked.

The idea about backing up and restoring from the CF card worked perfectly. All done in about 10mins. with just a few system settings needing restored manually: system view settings, auto power off time and startup password. Email and internet settings (the ones that take ages to configure) all preserved perfectly.

Thanks for your time in helping me resolve this issue. Hope it's of use to someone in the future.