Why does the installer/activation client have unreadable characters on Windows?

When running through the installation or activation, the text on the screen is unreadable. All of the characters have been replaced by boxes. How can I resolve this issue so that I can install MATLAB?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This issue may occur if one or more of your system fonts has become corrupted. To resolve this you can have Windows reinstall these fonts. To do so:

1) Go to the Start Menu to Control Panel

2) If you have the Classic view, select Fonts. For the Category view, click on Appearance and Themes. On the left side, click Fonts under the "See Also" area.

3) Move all of the font files in this directory to a new temporary folder such as one on your Desktop.

4) Once moved, Go to the File menu of the Fonts folder and select "Install New Font"

5) From the folder view, select the folder where you moved the fonts.

6) Click the "Select All" button and click OK

7) This will reinstall any fonts that are not corrupted.

Once complete, restart the machine to enact the changes. You should be able to start the installation/activation from that point.

If you still continue to experience an error you can activate the machine manually. To do so see the solution here:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/105854-how-can-i-install-matlab-or-other-mathworks-products-on-an-offline-machine

Instead of using the activation client as the solution suggests, once you have the license file, save it directly into MATLAB's licenses folder. For example:

C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2008a\licenses

NOTE: You may need to create the licenses folder as the activation did not complete

Once saved, you should be able to start MATLAB on your machine.