For some strange reason, my computer suddenly doesn't show certain unicode characters anymore! I have no idea what happened.

Affected applications include Windows Explorer (should be Japanese characters), Google Chrome (should be a heart), and Winamp (should be stars):

![unicode](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YRjox.png) ![unicode](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r1Dya.png) ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2EDJU.png)

Russian, German etc. characters are displayed normally. Chrome also displays Japanese script on websites, but not in the GUI. How can I fix it?

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> **TL;DR:** A workaround is to put a shortcut with a Unicode name on the desktop so that explorer.exe is the first process to display a Unicode string after booting.
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**Update:** I have tried to use System Restore to fix it. I needed to go back in time quite a while because the most recent restore points didn't solve it so I used one from the middle of November. After that restore, Unicode symbols were displayed again. Then I updated my system with Windows Update again because those were removed during the restore. After that, the error occurred again! I then did a restore to a point before my new updates, but the error persists, *and* the old restore point (which I used before) is *gone* and there are currently no other snapshots of the system. *Any suggestions on what to do now?*

**Update 2:** I could find a workaround: 

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> *Control Panel* → *Region and Language* → *Administration* → Change *Language for Unicode-incompatible programs* to *Japanese (Japan)*. 
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All mentioned programs display their symbols correctly again. However, I don't consider this a fix because these programs are not usually Unicode-incompatible, and it also leads to some (non-serious) artifacts in some programs. I still welcome an answer that tells me what went wrong here and how to fix the issue.

**Update 3:** I think I have isolated the particular Windows Update which causes the error. It is [Slow performance in applications that use the DirectWrite API on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2505438). I have installed all other updates except this one, and the error did not occur again.

**Update 4:** The true origin of this problem was Chrome, see accepted answer. Workaround: put shortcut with Unicode name on desktop so that explorer.exe is the first process to display a Unicode string after booting.