Weird language on Win XP control panel

[cardd22]

G'day all,

Just wanted to ask, I am currently running Win XP service pack 2. Just recently I started my computer and went to control panel. I noticed that the last 3 icons in the control panel window were written in a weird language. I didn't really pay much attention to it until today when I went to System Properties and noticed that some of the tabs in there were also written in this weird language (it looks like arabic but I really wouldn't know).

So I thought it someone messed around with the regional language but nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Do i just have a virus\adware\malware?

[preacherman481]

Just curious. Does the weird language look something like this:

יש לי בעיה עם המחשב שלי

Also, somewhere under Region and Language settings, there is an option to select a display language for non-Unicode programs. Is that set to anything? If so, what?

[cardd22]

Wierd language looks similar to that. On the Regional and Language settings it is set for English (US) for non-Unicode programs. Changed it to English (Australia) but there was no change still same problem.

[nihil]

Hmmmm,

Certainly not Arabic.............................. I would say Hebrew.

Strange though, normally if you change languages or character sets you change the lot rather than just a few?

Which icons/tabs are they?

[Cider]

Yip that is Hebrew ... do you have any malware symptoms ?

Just another point of view.

[Und3ertak3r]

Yip that is Hebrew ... do you have any malware symptoms ?

Just another point of view.

I will support Cider's Malware suspicion.. Had similar results with a recent AnitVirusXP infection..(clients bug not mine).. I just threw the Toolbox at it so I can't say exactly which malware caused it..
Here is a trick.. Bring up task manager.. go to processes and select "Show All users"...do you also have a undecipherable User name appearing?

[Cider]

Well when i was cleaning computers registry with this Antivirus XP rubbish there were some entries with hebrew + ascII code.

Im going with malware on this one.

Run a scan with malwarebytes antimalware and spybot.

Malware bytes generaltes a log which you can post here. I dont know if spybot does also generate a logfile as I havent played with the settings.

[nihil]

This is a strange one?

As a rule, malware in today's age tries to hide itself, so altering obvious things like icons and filenames isn't a good idea.

Hebrew is a rather unusual choice of language is it not? I would love to know if the files were called the same thing in Hebrew or does it say something totally different?

Some software updates can have strange effects. I updated my wife's Ad-Aware to 2008 and found that the language had defaulted to Portuguese (not a problem) but when I looked at the settings it said that the language was German! When I changed it to English and restarted everything was back to normal

This is a rather interesting one.

[preacherman481]

Tis' a mystery. Because of the language settings on my computer, one of my icons (one on the Control Panel for the settings on my Nvidia graphics card) shows up in Hebrew. But the OP says his settings are set to English.

[nihil]

What version and SP of Windows are we talking about here?

I have enabled Hebrew as a language in Win2000 SP4 (fully patched to August 2008) and rebooted, but I cannot seem to replicate the issue. I have the NVIDIA Media Centre software on this box as well.

Incidentally, is the Hebrew right to left or left to right?