Some system fonts on my XP seem to be corrupt and I want to delete them to get windows to reinstall them after restart, but they simply don’t want to be deleted from the folder. How can I delete them?
Eva
Before giving more details, I need to know which fonts you want to remove.
Franklin Gothic Medium (True Type)
Franklin Gothic Medium Italic (True Type)
Microsoft Sans Serif (True Type)
Modern (All res)
Script (All res)
Tahoma (True Type)
Tahoma Bold (True Type)
/Eva
Hi Eva,
Thanks for your reply.
It is almost impossible to have so many corrupt fonts. I once had a corrupt Franklin font file, so maybe that one affects all others. How do you tell a font is corrupt? Also what version of Windows are you running?
I have Windows XP Pro on two different machines (one laptop and one tower) with the same problem.
I am making maps in Illustrator CS and was using a very large map with lots of layers (40 MB) - extremely slow to save, which I have reduced down to 7 MB, so shouldn’t be any problem with the size itself any more. I have then made lots of versions of this map and some have the fonts embedded.
The map says some fonts are missing when I first open it in Illustrator and that they will be substitued with the closest default fonts. I have found refs to this online, and it should not be a problem.
About a month ago I discovered a lot of word docs’ fonts had gone funny. Lots of the fonts in the fonts list are in italics although the regular font is chosen and they are bold although the bold is not chosen. And arial bold was missing as well.
The maps were over the past week then getting more and more difficult to save, sometimes taking up to 40 min to save and since yesterday Illustrator just hangs when I try to save. Same thing on both computers.
I am suspecting corrupt fonts of all this and am now trying to delete all the fonts in windows XP to clear the bad stuff out and get the fonts to reinstall.
Many of the fonts could be deleted, but the ones I have listed simply refuse to go.
Eva
I doubt that is the problem. It might help if you send one of those font files to me, so I can compare it with the font file on my system. If it has an equal length and all bytes are equal, I can guarantee the font is not corrupt. I know this is not what you asked for, but I hope it helps.
I’ve compared all three files I received, and they are all (binary) equal to the ones I have installed on my system running Windows XP Professional Edition. I’ve calculated the MD5 hash values in case someone else experiences a similar problem and wants to find out whether his/ her fonts are corrupt.
framd.ttf
a8d23046bc8d38ee78b38e95ec47f9e5
framdit.ttf
d09ba9b299a65cccfe64615a5d388e0d
modern.fon
a26dcc54eb93d917faf40744c125ad94
So it is safe to say these fonts are not corrupt. It is still possible Windows fonts cache file is corrupt. Delete the font cache file: C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT and reboot Windows so it can regenerate it.
Do let us know your results.
Hi All,
I was reading this and I have almost the same problem. The difference is the user has deleted some fonts and if I browse to fonts folder with CMD or form another network computer, I can’t see them. But when I use that computer with explorer and I browse to Fonts folder they are still there (as 0 byte files). When I try to delete them again I get the message” Cannot delete the file: unable to read source file.”
I deleted the FNTCACHE file and restarted the computer but still they are listed there. Tried to reinstall them, it says they are already installed. Can someone please help me with this issue
Windows fonts folder still thinks the font is installed, but in the mean time the resource is no longer there.
Usually deleting the zero byte nonexistent font file solves the problem. Do press F5 to refresh the font list, and it should be removed.
Thanks for the reply. I pressed F5 also I restarted the computer as well. But still they are there and I can’t delet them becasue as you said they are nonexist files.