No text in settings menu

[j e b b e]

I just re-downloaded the Portal games to replay after a long time of not playing them. It boots up in like 640x480 or something. I click on the settings menu to change all of this, everything is missing the text so and any dropdown boxes are empty.

Anyone have any ideas?

[cheshirm]

some users must run steam with admin privileges so that it has permission to install files/create folders.

might try verifying game files in case something didnt install
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335

[TurkeyBurkey]

hello. time to necropost this 2 year old post. this response given tells me literally next to nothing and solves no issues at all. verifying game files did absolutely nothing for me and the issue is still persisting. give a more solid solution please

[cheshirm]

cannot tell whether
1. game did not install all necessary files so verifying game files with admin permission "should" install missing files
2. or files are installed but game cannot read them

I installed the game on win xp, 7, and 10. runs fine. perhaps you have win 11? or linux?

go to folder
...\steam\steamapps\common\portal
see if any useful error msgs in file console.log

[TurkeyBurkey]

hi, the issue is that the game actually loads the font it uses from your system fonts, for some reason the font got corrupted on my old pc which meant the text couldn't display at all. reinstalling the font after a friend provided it fixed the issue
this hasn't really affected me at all since then but i'm just leaving the solution here in case anyone ever has this issue again
by the way, this issue affects pretty much all source games that use this font (so basically all of them)