The names of the folders on the flash drive are Chinese characters. Instead of files there are “hieroglyphs” (unintelligible symbols) on the flash drive

Good afternoon.

Probably, every PC user has encountered a similar problem: you open an Internet page or a Microsoft Word document - and instead of text you see hieroglyphs (various “kryakozabry”, unfamiliar letters, numbers, etc. (like in the picture on the left...)).

It’s good if this document (with hieroglyphs) is not particularly important to you, but what if you need to read it?! Quite often, similar questions and requests for help with opening such texts are asked to me. In this short article I want to look at the most popular reasons for the appearance of hieroglyphs (and, of course, eliminate them).

Hieroglyphs in text files (.txt)

The most popular problem. The fact is that a text file (usually in txt format, but they are also formats: php, css, info, etc.) can be saved in different encodings.

Encoding- this is a set of characters necessary to fully ensure the writing of text in a specific alphabet (including numbers and special characters). More details about this here: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_set

Most often, one thing happens: the document is simply opened in the wrong encoding, which causes confusion, and instead of the code of some characters, others will be called. Various strange symbols appear on the screen (see Fig. 1)…

Rice. 1. Notepad - encoding problem

How to deal with this?

In my opinion, the best option is to install an advanced notepad, such as Notepad++ or Bred 3. Let's take a closer look at each of them.

Notepad++

One of the best notepads for both beginners and professionals. Pros: free program, supports Russian language, works very quickly, code highlighting, opens all common file formats, a huge number of options allow you to customize it for yourself.

In terms of encodings, there is generally complete order here: there is a separate section “Encodings” (see Fig. 2). Just try changing ANSI to UTF-8 (for example).

After changing the encoding, my text document became normal and readable - the hieroglyphs disappeared (see Fig. 3)!

Rice. 3. The text has become readable... Notepad++

Bred 3

Another great program designed to completely replace the standard notepad in Windows. It also “easily” works with many encodings, easily changes them, supports a huge number of file formats, and supports new Windows operating systems (8, 10).

By the way, Bred 3 is very helpful when working with “old” files saved in MS DOS formats. When other programs show only hieroglyphs, Bred 3 easily opens them and allows you to calmly work with them (see Fig. 4).

If there are hieroglyphs instead of text in Microsoft Word

The very first thing you need to pay attention to is the file format. The fact is that starting with Word 2007, a new format appeared - “docx” (previously it was just “doc”). Usually, new file formats cannot be opened in the “old” Word, but sometimes it happens that these “new” files open in the old program.

Just open the file properties, and then look at the “Details” tab (as in Fig. 5). This way you will find out the file format (in Fig. 5 - the “txt” file format).

If the file format is docx - and you have an old Word (below version 2007) - then simply update Word to 2007 or higher (2010, 2013, 2016).

Next, when opening the file please note(by default, this option is always enabled, unless, of course, you have a “don’t understand what assembly”) - Word will ask you again: what encoding to open the file in (this message appears at any “hint” of problems when opening the file, see Fig. 5).

Rice. 6. Word - file conversion

Most often, Word itself automatically determines the required encoding, but the text is not always readable. You need to set the slider to the desired encoding when the text becomes readable. Sometimes you have to literally guess how a file was saved in order to read it.

Rice. 8. The browser detected the wrong encoding

To fix the display of the site: change the encoding. This is done in the browser settings:

Google chrome: options (icon in the upper right corner)/advanced options/encoding/Windows-1251 (or UTF-8);
Firefox: left ALT button (if you have the top panel turned off), then view/page encoding/select the desired one (most often Windows-1251 or UTF-8);
Opera: Opera (red icon in the upper left corner)/page/encoding/select the desired one.

Thus, in this article, the most common cases of the appearance of hieroglyphs associated with an incorrectly defined encoding were analyzed. Using the above methods, you can solve all the main problems with incorrect encoding.

I would be grateful for additions on the topic. Good Luck :)

This was the first time I saw something like this - the files and folders from the flash drive disappeared, and instead of them there appeared files with incomprehensible names in the form of “kryakozyabriks”, let’s call them hieroglyphs.

The flash drive was opened using standard Windows tools and additionally, unfortunately, this did not give positive results.

All files on the flash drive are gone, except one. Several files appeared with strange names: &, t, n-&, etc.

The files on the flash drive have disappeared, but Windows shows that the free space is occupied. This suggests that although the files we are interested in are not displayed, they are located on the flash drive.

Although the files have disappeared, the space is occupied. In this particular case, 817 MB are occupied

The first thought about the cause of what happened is the effect of the virus. Earlier, when there was a virus, the file manager FAR manager was used, which, as a rule, sees all files (hidden and system). However, this time, FAR manager saw only what the standard Windows Explorer did...

Even the FAR manager could not see the “lost” files

Since Windows does not see missing files, it does not try the trick of changing file attributes using the command line and the command attrib -S -H /S /D.

What will Linux see?

In this situation, as an experiment, I decided to use a Linux-based operating system. In this particular case, a disk with the Ubuntu 10.04.3 operating system was used (more details about Ubuntu and where to download it).

Important! There is no need to install Ubuntu on your computer - just boot from a CD, just like you do with .

After booting Ubuntu, the desktop will appear and you can work with folders and files in exactly the same way as in Windows.

As expected, Ubuntu saw more files compared to Windows.

Ubuntu also displays those files that were not visible from Windows (clickable)

Next, in order not to bother with file attributes, basic steps were taken: all displayed files were selected and copied to the local drive “D” (of course, you can also copy the files to the system drive “C”).

Now you can boot Windows again and check what happened.

Now Windows sees several Word files. Please note that file names are also displayed correctly

Alas, the problem is not solved, since there were clearly more files on the flash drive (judging by the volume of 817 MB) than we were able to extract. For this reason, let's try to check the flash drive for errors.

Troubleshooting flash drive errors

To find and fix errors on disks, Windows has a standard utility.

Step 1. Right-click on the flash drive icon and select the “Properties” command.

Step 2. Go to the “Service” tab and click on the “Run check” button.

Step 3. Click on the “Launch” button.

After checking and correcting system errors, a corresponding message will appear.

Message: "Some errors have been found and fixed"

After eliminating the errors, the files with hieroglyphs disappeared, and a hidden folder named FOUND.000 appeared in the root directory of the flash drive.

Inside the FOUND.000 folder there were 264 files with the CHK extension. Files with the CHK extension can store fragments of files of various types extracted from hard drives and flash drives using the ScanDisk or CHKDISK utilities.

If all the files on the flash drive were of the same type, for example, Word documents with the docx extension, then in the Total Commander file manager, select all the files and press the key combination Ctrl + M (Files - Group renaming). We indicate which extension to look for and what to change it to.

In this particular case, I only knew that the flash drive contained Word documents and files with Power Point presentations. Changing extensions at random is very problematic, so it is better to use specialized programs - they themselves will determine what type of data is stored in the file. One such program is a free utility that does not require installation on your computer.

Specify the source folder (I dumped the CHK files onto my hard drive). Next, I chose the option in which files with different extensions would be placed in different folders.

All you have to do is click “Start”

As a result of the utility, three folders appeared:

DOC - with Word documents;
JPG - with pictures;
ZIP - with archives.

The contents of eight files remained unrecognized. However, the main task was completed, Word documents and photographs were restored.

The downside is that it was not possible to restore similar file names, so you will obviously have to tinker with renaming Word documents. As for files with pictures, names such as FILE0001.jpg, FILE0002.jpg, etc. will also work.

This was the first time I saw something like this - the files and folders from the flash drive disappeared, and instead of them there appeared files with strange names in the form of “kryakozyabriks”, let’s call them hieroglyphs.

The flash drive was opened using standard Windows tools and the display of hidden files and folders was additionally enabled, alas, this did not give positive results.

The first thought about the cause of what happened is the effect of the virus. Previously, when the virus hid all files on a flash drive and turned folders into shortcuts, the FAR manager file manager was used, which, as a rule, sees all files (hidden and system). However, this time, FAR manager saw only what the standard Windows Explorer did...

Since Windows does not see missing files, it does not try the trick of changing file attributes using the command line and the command attrib -S -H /S /D.

What will Linux see?

In this situation, as an experiment, I decided to use a Linux-based operating system. In this particular case, a disk with the Ubuntu 10.04.3 operating system was used (read more about Ubuntu and where to download it here).

Important! There is no need to install Ubuntu on your computer - just boot from the CD, just like you would from a Live CD.

After booting Ubuntu, the desktop will appear and you can work with folders and files in exactly the same way as in Windows.

As expected, Ubuntu saw more files compared to Windows.

Now you can boot Windows again and check what happened.

Troubleshooting flash drive errors

To find and fix errors on disks, Windows has a standard utility.

Step 1. Right-click on the flash drive icon and select the “Properties” command.

Step 2. Go to the “Service” tab and click on the “Run check” button.

Step 3. Click on the “Launch” button.

After checking and correcting system errors, a corresponding message will appear.

After eliminating the errors, the files with hieroglyphs disappeared, and a hidden folder named FOUND.000 appeared in the root directory of the flash drive.

In this particular case, I only knew that the flash drive contained Word documents and files with Power Point presentations. Changing extensions at random is very problematic, so it is better to use specialized programs - they themselves will determine what type of data is stored in the file. One such program is the free utility unCHKfree (download 35 KB), which does not require installation on your computer.

Specify the source folder (I dumped the CHK files onto my hard drive). Next, I chose the option in which files with different extensions would be placed in different folders.

As a result of the utility, three folders appeared:

The contents of eight files remained unrecognized. However, the main task was completed, Word documents and photographs were restored.