Missing Letters! Help!

All I have done to the fonts folder was install a load of new fonts from my Windows PC

If you would get rid of these and clean your font caches, I would bet that your problem would go away. Here is a list of the fonts that Apple provides for reference.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301332

If that does fix it, you can then add them back by halves to isolate the one causing the problem.

Hello and welcome to the Apple Discussion Forums! This is the best place to find answers to all your Mac questions.

I've had this problem before.
Did you mess with anything in Font Book; Disable or Remove any fonts that looked unimportant?
If so, un-mess with those fonts and the problem should fix itself.

I just got my MacBook Pro less than a month ago, and I'm experiencing the same issue. I haven't done anything with my fonts. It seems like it could be a memory issue as it starts happening near the end of the day after working on my laptop all day. I am a web developer and usually have TextWrangler, Firefox, Thunderbird, iChat and iTunes open most of the day. And sometimes I'll use Photoshop. I have 2Gb of memory, and whatever the standard video memory is..

I've never experienced it right after booting. It affects all programs and have even seen it on the top system menu. I've noticed it when writing code where the "gap" will stay at the same spot on the screen. So if I'm inserting text at the beginning of a line of code, the "gap" will stay at a spot, say 20 characters in. So as I type, and the characters are being pushed right, the "gap" stays in the same spot. So it's not that certain letters are disappearing, but rather that certain spots on the screen will just stop displaying whatever character should be there. But it's also on a per-window basis--if I drag a window around, the "gap" will float with the window.

Hope that makes sense...

I understand what you mean. That's very interesting, although I don't think this is the quite the same issue this other user is experiencing. So this issue affects all the text on the screen?

What I would do:
1 - Repair permissions (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility) select the first drive in the left pane and click the *Repair Permissions* button.
2 - Create a new user account temporarily and see if that user has the same problem.
3 - Boot with the install disk and run an Archive and Install, keeping all the user settings and data.
4 - Wish I had purchased AppleCare when I had the chance.

Same here.. I've had my macbook pro about 1.5 months now.. and it just started doing this as i'm doing heavier work loads or running multiple aps... its hard to say exactly when and how its doing it.. but it just seems to fail to display characters of text that should be there... it crosses all programs and windows.. but comes and goes.. and is very temper mental. it's driving me nutz...

another issue unrelated i hope someone can point me in the right direction, i get this pinwheel of death thing, where it'll just spin and spin for like 20-30 seconds, usually after i just open a browser for the first time, or do my first real activity after startup.. i can minimize the window, switch tasks and whatnot, its not 'frozen', but the ap is un-useable during that time its 'compiling' or something.. and its annoying as ****, and i'm pretty sure should not be there..

any help appreciated... those are actually a small part of my mac complaints.. i'm starting to really regret making the switch..

Yeah, mine has done that much before when I'm working in my text editor writing code. Usually though it's not so bad. Just an occasional letter here or there missing. Or maybe just in the title bar of windows.

I won't post my whole screen, but I captured one of the times it happened to me too:



Even in the dock...

actually here, maybe this helps, i took a screenshot.

http://www.atreidex.com/Picture.png http://www.atreidex.com/Picture.png

That's crazy. Have you tried temporarily creating a new user account to see if it has the same issues?

You might try cleaning your font caches with FontFinagler (use Google to find it).

by the way, I looked at your website and found you on MySpace (and now I feel like a bit of a stalker). you've done some very, very nice work. keep it up.