If you're not running any plugins, htaccess, or anything... next thing I'd check is the database configuration compared to the database's original charset. (UTF vs latin or something.) I've had situations before where it gets changed (for whatever odd reason, usually in a server migration) during the setup and different characters kink the Manager.
Garret Overstreet
Business and Marketing Consultant
Just to verify, you change the compress_js and compress_cs values from 1 to 0 to disable, correct?
That's right.
(character set issues) Where can I check this?
Look at the database in PhpMyAdmin. First, check the character set in the core/config/config.inc.php file. Then look at the database itself, each table, and each text field in the tables to make sure they all match the config setting. the SiteCheck extra will check those all for you (and a lot of other things), but it's not free.