Missing or scrambled text in Steam menus
My Steam application is missing text and/or the menus appear broken, how can it be fixed?
Windows system font
This problem may be due to a bad or missing Windows system font. The easiest solution is to install a known good font set. Currently Steam utilizes Arial and Arial Bold fonts.
Installing Missing or Damaged Fonts
- Download the attached file by clicking the following link: SteamFonts.zip
- Log out of Steam entirely, and close all other programs that might be trying to use these fonts
- You might also have to temporarily disable "System Restore" for this to work:
In Windows XP: Click Start > Control Panel > System > System Restore > then check Turn off System Restore
In Windows Vista/7: Click Start > Control Panel > System > System Protection > Configure >Click on the radio button that says Turn off System Protection
- After downloading the zip file use a zip utility such as winzip to unzip the file(s)
Windows has a native unzip, just right-click on the zip and "explore" and drag and drop the files into a temporary directory
Windows XP
- Open Control Panel and double click on Fonts
- Choose File and then Install New Font
- Finally, remember where you put the unzipped fonts and go to that directory
- Select the font and choose 'OK'
- The next time you start Steam you should be able to see all the text again
Windows Vista/7
- Click Start > Control Panel and click on Fonts
- Remember where you put the unzipped fonts and go to that directory
- Drag and drop the font files into the fonts directory and they should install automatically
- The next time you start Steam you should be able to see all the text again
Re-install winui.gcf
The winui.gcf may periodically get corrupted. The main symptoms are missing text in Steam menus and the items in the My games, My media, and Tools tabs overlapping.
- Exit Steam
- Navigate to your Steamapps folder (default location: C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps)
- Delete or rename the file winui.gcf
- Launch Steam and test the issue
