Can a font go bad???

[lorie]

I'm not sure how it happened but I think a font on my system became corrupt. I have all decorative/fun fonts in a folder that is not the Windows system Font folder (I install/load them as needed with MainType...) This font has worked fine for months. However, a couple of days ago, it began to present a problem. In MainType, when I tried to scroll down through the folder where it resided, the program would slow down to a crawl. Clicking on this font (to show its preview) caused MainType to lock up for several minutes. When I closed MainType and tried looking in the folder in Windows Explorer, the same thing happened. This behavior became steadily worse, until today, I decided to delete it. Even just selecting it to delete locked up Windows Explorer to the point that even the Task Manager could not kill it... I finally was able to delete the demon font by rebooting in Safe Mode and deleting it!

Any ideas on what happened? I am running the RC version of Windows 7 but have not had this problem until a couple of days ago. Virus protection is up, running and current. So far no other fonts are affected but I'd like to keep it that way. The font was a freebie, downloaded from what has always been a reputable free font site. I have downloaded it again but have not yet unzipped it.

Any help/ideas would be great!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

A copy of the font or a link to download it would help.

[lorie]

Here is a link to the font:

http://www.dafont.com/retro-rock-poster.font

As I mentioned, I had downloaded it several months ago and had no problem until recently.

Thanks for any input on what might have happened...

lj

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I don't know why anyone would want this font. I find it hard to believe it was actually designed to look like that. It is just some poor quality scans converted to a font.

The font slows to a crawl in FontCreator too, just on trying to open it in the Font Test window. Each glyph consists of hundreds of contours.

I would just delete the font, and that is the end of the problem.

[Dick Pape]

I used your link and had no problem with that font in MainType or FontCreator. Win XP. You could check to see if it is mysteriously installed and uninstall it.

I understand the Windows 7 versions are tenuous and do change.

a. Did it happen in prior versions of Win7? Can you upgrade to a more current version?
b. Does it happen on any other fonts?
c. Here's a great free one and is large enough for a good test.

A couple of links:

http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/bobistheowl.html for the words and

http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/AliceinWonderland.zip for the font. (~1mb zipped, ~2mb .ttf)
Along with some of those CJK 20mb jumbos, Alice In Wonderland is definitely "hefty".

Dick Pape
ps I'm more forgiving than Bhikkhu Pesala and am used to long waits for unusual results! It's not really a font, it's art!!