Unknown glyph symbols on the Volume Mixer

I get these symbols on the volume mixer. It seems to happen at the end of every line. This is a nearly clean install of Windows 7 x64 (only Chrome and Firefox installed).

Any idea where this could be coming from? The system is using all the default fonts.

It is not a localization issue, and has since happened again on a completely clean install of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (no 3rd party apps).

It almost appears as though the UI is attempting to render newline characters.

After reading this article, I would suggest deleting FNTCACHE.DAT in C:\Windows\System32 as suggested by anoise:

I re-installed Windows 7 and the squares where there again, BUT I got rid of them now. It seems the solution, for me anyway, was to delete the file FNTCACHE.DAT in Windows\System32 and restart. I tried this before re-installing windows 7 but it did not work, this time however it worked. For two weeks now I'm free of the squares and Chinese characters are displayed correctly too in explorer. Yes it seems the problem with Chinese characters displayed as squares in explorer and the squares in mixer volume are going hand in hand and is a bug in windows 7 font cache or something...

This is because of your localization settings, as buttertoad mentioned.

My windows was by default English - South Africa I then changed it to English - Trinidad and it broke my Volume Mixer as you experience it.

To fix it, I changed my settings back to English - South Africa, I went a step further and removed all other keyboard languages.

Note: You have to restart after changing your localization settings.

Control Panel - Region and Language Settings