A Font that Reboots my PC

Fonts and More General Font Discussions
1

This is not a bug in the font as far as I can tell, but I’m curious to know how a font can have such a dramatic effect.

  1. Extract the attached archive to a folder.
  2. Open default.hlml in Opera 10.50 or Chrome Iron

My PC reboots immediately — other users report a BSOD.

If you delete or move the font “\css\MASTERPLAN___.ttf” referenced in the stylesheet, the crash no longer occurs.

This bug affects Web Page font rendering using the @fontface attribute to load a custom font. The custom font is unusually complex, having many nodes and contours in each glyph. FontView.exe displays the font very slowly, and although Firefox can display the page without crashing, it does so extremely slowly, and zoom is unusable, taking about 1 minute to zoom in on my old PC.

Loading the same default.html page in Chrome Iron also reboots my PC. Internet Explorer has no problem because it doesn’t support web fonts.

If the font is made simpler, it no longer causes a crash.

2

It sounds like an issue with Windows rasterizer. We don’t want to risk a crash here, so we won’t investigate this any further.

3

This kind of reaction comes from handling some complex fonts. My computer gives a black screen. Others get BSODs or a reboot as you have. I get infinite loops from my ATI video card - supposedly. I’ve changed cards and doesn’t help.

Seems to be related to how much memory you have (though not entirely). Others say to remove Clear Type to simplify processing: Ctl Panel/Display (Display Properties)/Appearance/Effects/ “Use the following method to smooth edges …” omit ClearType - use Standard. That seems to be most reliable.

Often occurs because of a single very large glyph not just a very large font. I will remove glyphs as alternative. That font (Master Plan)is not obviously large, so who knows!

Rasterizer is good answer.