Crosshair and weapon icons replaced with letters

[Crowty]

In like all my source games that run as hl2.exe the font is weird and the crosshair is replaced with a Q. Also all the weapon icons are replaced with different letters too. How do I fix this? I've tried deleting the Half Life 2 and redownloading it, I've gone in and deleted the text files and redownloaded them. I don't know what to do. Screenshots here http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681322447
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681322459
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681322481
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681322396

[Calmly Frenetic]

The Q-problem...

The crosshair and other icon graphics are stored in these font files:
halflife2.ttf, hl2crosshairs.ttf, hl2ep2.ttf, marlett.ttf & boxrocket.ttf
in the folder ...\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life 2\hl2\resource\
The font "names" are HalfLife2, HL2cross, HL2EP2, Marlett & BoxRocket.

The game does not need any of those fonts to be "installed" on your computer. It reads them directly from the resource directory. The Q-problem can happen if those fonts are missing or corrupt, so delete the ones that are there and get Steam to download new ones by doing a "Verify Integrity of Game Cache":
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335

Do the same for any other Half Life or source engine games you have installed.

Find where all the "installed" fonts for your operating system are located (eg C:\Windows\Fonts). If there are any fonts with the same name as the five above, you should delete/uninstall them (keep backup if you want) and then restart your computer.


Nobody seems to know (or admit to) the cause of the problem. Are you using any mods, custom assets or configurations? One player suggested it might be a problem with the system registry.


Edit: An alternative solution is to actually "install" those fonts on your computer (for example, copy them into C:\Windows\Fonts). But that may not work properly if the various source games use different versions of the fonts.

[m0nk]

Any news? I still have this problem and couldnt get rid of it. Im running windows 10 and there are no halflife related fonts installed and i tried deleting them in the game folder and veryfied the game files afterwards. still the same. Also trying to install them dont work , it wont let me install them on windows10.