Fonts Disappear

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Some of my fonts seem to have mysteriously disappeared. In Media Player and a prog called Supervoice (Telephony stuff) all I see is wee squares instead of the normal characters. In recent PDF files some of the characters are just squares too!

I found a KB article which tells you how to fix a corrupt registry key which I followed and it temporarily fixed the problem (sorry don’t have the article number to hand). However, when I opened a Word file (I originally made on another PC) all I got was garbage. Does anybody know if I might have a missing font on my PC or is there something else happening here?
TIA
Brian

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This could be the result of a downgraded or damaged video driver. Try this:
Activate control panel and double click on System icon for the System Properties window. Click on the Performance tab and then click on the Graphics bar near the bottom. In the Advanced Graphics Settings window reduce hardware acceleration down 3 notches (it probably is on Full). Click on OK that then OK again. Restart ME and try Word again.
If fonts are proper, repeat process and take hardware acceleration up one notch.
If fonts are not proper repeat process and turn hardware acceleration off.

Good luck,
Bob_D

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HI
Sorry to take so long to reply. I have been away from my computer for a while. I really thought you had hit the nail on the head with your advice as I had recently installed an updated driver for my video card. However, reducing the acceleration didn’t fix the problem.
Thanks for the suggestion though.
Cheers

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Problem still unresolved. Thought I would add some more information in case anyone has any clues. I am also enclosing a screen shot of one prog that’s affected.

If I delete the fonts key in Windows Me reg and restart then the problem resolves and all the progs are normal again. The snag is that Word, etc have now got no fonts to work with other than the most basic sets so I can’t read any previous documents.

Once I reinstall the fonts then the same problem occurs. Basically I am following the advise given in the knowledge base:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?…b;en-us;Q133732%5B/url%5D
Edited by WyllyWylly to add URL markup
TIA
Brian

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One thing that you could try is to install TweakUI and then on the repair tab, choose to repair the Fonts folder. The description of what this does is very lame, stating only to use it if the folder has “lost its magic”.

Do you see this problem in all applications, or just in a few, such as WiMP and Word? You have also said that you have run the “fix” from Microsoft. When you run it, it then works for a little while. Is the “little while” until the next reboot, or is it arbitrary?

And, I would also try to locate the font named “Marlett” and make sure it’s installed. That, along with System, MS Sans Serif and Tahoma, seem to comprise most of a default installation.

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I tried tweakui but alas no change

I delete the reg key as per Q133732.
I reboot and the WiMP and telephony program now appear normal.
Word & PPt have only one font listed (Marlett)
Excel has 5 fonts listed including Fixedsys, Marlett, System, MS Sans Serif. Most other progs appear normal (Adobe Acrobat Reader- intro screen is garbled)

After another re-boot I open up control panel and click on Fonts folder it opens as an empty window. After some time (I assume its rebuilding the reg key here) all the fonts appear again in the window. On opening WiMP and the telephony program the displays have been replaced by the boxes again and Word, etc now have all their normal fonts back.

Brian

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Hi Brian, I can’t answer your problem about rubbish characters on your screen, but I might have a solution for MS Word.

MS Word, when it starts up, looks for the fonts supported by your default printer. Then it will show those fonts (and only those fonts) on the screen. MS Word does NOT automatically use all the fonts that you have ever installed.

In case I am right (and this is NOT guaranteed!) why not check your default printer? If you don’t happen to have any printer attached, you can tell MS Windows to install the driver for the HP Laserjet III, the most common printer in the whole wide world a few years ago. This will support every font you ever heard of and MS Word will be fooled into thinking you actually have gone out and bought a printer.

Good luck

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Many thanks for the suggetion which I tried but no luck I’m afraid.

Please see my reply to Bob_D and the attachment.

Do you know which fonts the OS uses for display in progs like Media Player?

Thanks
Brian

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(Not using ME so just guessing…)

Right_click on your Desktop > Properties > Appearance

Do you have any odd fonts or scheme listed?

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I have WIndows Standard Scheme. For most of the Items in the drop down box the font box is grey and no font is listed. Where a font is listed it is MS Sans Serif (Western)
Brian

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I would only expect to see a font listed if it was a Text component you had selected.
You could try either manually changing the fonts to Tahoma (the default I think) or maybe selecting a scheme and see if that works.

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Tried the change to Tahoma but still no change I’m afraid. This is really a strange one.
Thanks for your efforts.
Brian

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Have you done a system restore to a day before the fonts disappeared?
Other than that, the only thing I can think of is to do a dirty re-install of WinME.
Daughter had the same problem, had to re-install Win98SE, THEN install her upgrade WinME to get all of her fonts back…naturally her HDD had to be wiped clean to start from scratch…but do the system restore first and see if that fixes it. Good luck.

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I tried system restore but it only goes back to Feb 9 which is not far enough. I may have to do a re-install as you suggest but i’m reluctant to do this right now.
I think I’ll just live with the problem for a while and see if any other ideas are forthcoming.
Thanks to all who gave input
Brian

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