My Windows 7 has suddenly stopped displaying Unicode symbols
Found this interesting tidbit. It seems that this may have something to do with which application first tries to display a unicode character.
Long story short, I found this bug for Chromium and a comment in the discussion suggests that this is the case and provides a workaround of putting a unicode-named file on the Windows desktop to force Windows to be the first application to render a unicode character:
"Therefore, as a workaround for this issue, put a file named 火.txt or similar on your Windows Desktop. I suppose this causes Windows Explorer to be the first program to render a [unicode] character."
I tried this approach and sure enough, it worked for me -- without having to change the Language for Unicode incompatible programs."
- Change your "Language for Unicode incompatible programs" to Japanese (any other language will do)
- Change this back to the original value.
It fixed the issue I had with the display of Chinese characters after a Windows update.
Brian Rothstein left a comment with such an answer.