I eventually managed to figure what was wrong.
Apparently fonts default to Microsoft Sans Serif
for missing characters, but Microsoft Sans Serif
may not have those characters.
I had to manually install Segoe UI Symbol
font and link it to Microsoft Sans Serif
.
I did this by adding the following entry to Microsoft Sans Serif
in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE–\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontLink\SystemLink
seguisym.ttf,Segoe UI Symbol
A pair (file name,font name). Used no spaces since it was what the page I referred in my question did.
Segoe UI Symbol
may already be installed in Win7 from what I saw in my environment, but there may be cases where you need to install it manually. YMMV here, I'm using a specific installation of Win7 for embedded systems.