Necessary Windows fonts?

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I last looked in my WindowsFonts folder a while back and noticed there were 445 fonts listed there, taking up over 92 megs of disk space. WHY?

Checking around and googling the subject, there were quite a few hits, but no real definitive answer as to how many of these fonts are actually required for XP to operate properly.
I DID notice in one site, a study made as to what slows up Windows performance.

First was Norton Security Suite.
Second was excessive fonts loaded.
Third was Kapersky AV.
Fourth was Bit Defender.

I don’t think I REALLY NEED all of those fonts and would like to do some cleanup. One site listed about 62 necessary fonts for WIndows. ( listed below )
Can anyone come up with any other information?

Arial
Arial Black
Arial Bold
Arial Bold Italic
Arial Italic
Comic Sans MS
Comic Sans MS Bold Courier 10,12,15
Courier New
Courier New Bold
Courier New Bold Italic
Courier New Italic
Estrangelo Edessa
Franklin Gothic Medium
Franklin Gothic Medium
Italic
Gautami
Georgia
Georgia Bold
Georgia Bold Italic
Georgia Italic Impact
Latha
Lucida Console
Lucida Sans Unicode
Microsoft Sans Serif
Modern MS Sans Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24
MS Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24
Mv Boli
Palatino Linotype
Palatino Linotype Bold
Palatino Linotype Bold Italic
Palatino Linotype Italic
Roman
Script
Small Fonts
Symbol
Symbol 8,10,12,14,18,24
Tahoma
Tahoma Bold
Times New Roman
Times New Roman Bold
Times New Roman Bold Italic
Times New Roman Italic
Trebuchet MS
Trebuchet MS Bold
Trebuchet MS Bold Italic
Trebuchet MS Italic
Tunga
Verdana
Verdana Bold
Verdana Bold Italic Verdana Italic
Webdings
WingDings
WST_Czech
WST_Engl
WST_Fren
WST_Germ
WST_Ital
WST_Span
WST_Swed

( why I need the WST_Czech, French, German, Italian, Spanish or Swedish is another question )

Just some New Years Musings.

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You certainly don’t need all of these. As far as I know, the following are not essential:

Estrangelo Edessa
Franklin Gothic Medium
Franklin Gothic Medium
Italic
Gautami
Georgia
Georgia Bold
Georgia Bold Italic
Georgia Italic Impact
Latha
Modern
Mv Boli
Palatino Linotype
Palatino Linotype Bold
Palatino Linotype Bold Italic
Palatino Linotype Italic
Roman
Script
Tunga
WST_Czech
WST_Engl
WST_Fren
WST_Germ
WST_Ital
WST_Span
WST_Swed

(The WST_ fonts are teletype fonts for different languages)

So you’d keep

Arial (all versions)
Comic Sans MS (all versions)
Courier New (all versions)
Lucida Console
Lucida Sans Unicode
Marlett (this is hidden from the Fonts control panel)
Microsoft Sans Serif
MS Sans Serif (all versions)
MS Serif (all versions)
Small Fonts
Symbol (all versions)
Tahoma (all versions)
Times New Roman (all versions)
Trebuchet MS (all versions)
Verdana (all versions)
Webdings
WingDings

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Hans,
Thanks for the info.
I’ll have to get busy and do a little trimming. I just don’t like a lot of “bloat” taking up space for no good reason.
Must be my Scandinavian background or something.

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They come with all of that ware one tries out and does NOT get removed when a uninstall is done.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Hans, do you know what you are talking about?

You propose to remove system fonts (as Modern, Script, WST_…, ets) from Windows installation! Such action may crash Windows completely! All these fonts are in Windows installation package and Windows Setup installs all of them automatically. Other applications (as System File Check) will reinstall them in case they are damaged or deleted.

Bob,

Microsoft insists you REALLY NEED all these fonts to display proper picture on your monitor. Look at this issue from another point of view: “raw” Windows installation (without any other programs installed) takes approximately 1,500 MB of your hard drive space. Your Fonts folder takes only 6.5 % of this space. Can you bear it? If you are really out of empty space on your hard drive, consider to acquire new, bigger hard drive – they are inexpensive now. You can buy 250,000 MB hard drive for less than $100 after rebates…

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I know that they are installed by Windows, but what are they ever used for on the average computer? Fonts such as Modern and Script are plotter fonts, and the WST_ fonts are teletype fonts. How many users have a plotter or a teletype?
Removing a font such as Tahoma, Trebuchet MS or Marlett would be an entirely different matter, since these fonts are used by the Windows interface. One shouldn’t try to remove those.

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Fonts are used not only for printing, but for displaying picture on the monitor also. That’s why they are necessary for proper Windows functioning and yes, they ARE used “on average computer”. You can use a computer without any printer installed, but can you use it without any monitor?

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I admit I’m a very limited computer user, but the only times I’ve seen fonts such as WST_Czech and Script on my monitor were when I opened those fonts in the Fonts control panel.

But I agree with you that these fonts don’t take up a lot of disk space, so there’s not much to be gained by removing them.

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Hans,
———————————
I admit I’m a very limited computer user
——————————–
Your modesty is overwhelming. With all you have contributed to this Forum and the number of people who you have helped along the way, I have to dispute that statement in the strongest terms.
You have to be the backbone of this knowledge base. Keep up the terrific work, Hans.

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Thanks for the compliments

What I meant was that unlike some Loungers, I don’t tweak my PC much, and neither do I install a lot of (freeware) utilities; in that sense I am a ‘limited’ user.

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See my post post 623,460 above.

Despite what you say about MS INSISTING that I need all that BLOAT on my system, my Fonts folder now looks like I think it should. ALL is working fine, so maybe my configuration really doesn’t need 445 font files.

Just because HDs are getting larger and cheaper these days doesn’t mean that a user should leave all of that flotsam & jetsam & detritus taking up room for no purpose. I should go out and buy a new HD just to have more available junk room?
I appreciate your concern but I don’t think I’ll heed it.

BTW,I think Hans DOES know what he is talking about.

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[indent]

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BTW,I think Hans DOES know what he is talking about.

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[/indent]AMEN to that!

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I tend to agree with kaplinb about leaving fonts that are installed as part of a Windows installation. You never know when some intrepid programmer is going to assume that one of those fonts is present because it was installed initially. I’m pretty sure that there are not 445 fonts installed initially. See the comments in the bottom half of Fonts: Default fonts in Windows XP on restoring default fonts. NOTE: scroll down don’t use the View Solution button.

Joe

--Joe

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Joe,
Just because the font(s) were installed by Windows, doesn’t necessarily mean they are NEEDED by Windows.
It’s similar to a program that will install about a dozen language files in the initial install. No questions asked, just installs them. So what good do they do for a person who speaks English for example, to have a Bulgarian language file written to his HD?
NONE.
Delete them.
Fonts? Same, same. JMHO.

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That’s why they are called PERSONAL COMPUTERS. I’m just loooking at it from a developer’s standpoint. Windows might not need it for your particular configuraton but a developer could know that it was installed by default and expect it to be there. At least if you have moved them to another folder they won’t be loaded by Windows and you can ‘re-install’ any you might need.

Joe

--Joe

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That’s also called “being all things, for all people” Also why Windows has grown into a supersized program, with everything you ever wanted, to be in the initial package.

I guess it’s great for the developers ( and I’m not trying to be sarcastic here ) but if a company is writing a program and it needs this that or some other type of file or font or language, why not make it an option to the purchaser of the software app to select installing it, not relying on MS to have included it in it’s OS?
I HAVE seen some of this recently, at least in the selection of languages. They ask do you want English, French, German, Swedish or another language option right at the start of the install.

Well, that’s the end of my Different opinions are good for progress.

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Hi Bob,

I notice that I have 234 fonts and this is after a recent reinstall from scratch (just because). One of the programs that put fonts on is PrintShop which I really like to use. I do like the “different fonts” that are offered. I wouldn’t dream of pruning my fonts simply because I enjoy having various ones to choose from when I am being creative. Since I have an 80GB HD, it isn’t a problem for me. I guess it is certainly an individual matter whether you want a large selection of fonts or just the ones that are necessary. This has been an interesting discussion! Thanks for starting it.

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Seems like an awful lot of effort for absolutely no noticeable gain. Other than personal edification, that is.

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Not much effort, with a lot less bloat.

“Different strokes for different folks”.

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Here’s my somewhat worthless Canadian . I have 638 fonts on my system and notice no slowdown whatsoever, either on bootup or in normal operation of the system. Most have come from installed applications as others have rightly pointed out. However, I use most of them for my website as graphic titles to articles and really appreciate having the variety they provide. In the old Win 95 and 98 days, the rule of thumb was to limit your installed fonts to 300. Having more than 300 was said to impact performance. I seriously doubt that on the newer machines we have today with their faster processors and large amounts of RAM that this rule any longer applies. There are far more things which can cause “bloat” and cause a performance hit than a few measly fonts, IMHO.

One other note in regard to the items listed in the first post of this thread that purportedly slow down one’s system. Kaspersky AV was listed as one of them and with perhaps an extremely rare exception, this is totally false. I can’t help but wonder how dated that information is. However, Norton is indeed guilty of being one bloated and taxing program. hehe

Jeff

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As mentioned by st3333ve in one of his posts above, let’s not lose sight of the fact that a vast majority of fonts, over time, are installed by OTHER applications, NOT Windows, so it ain’t all MS’s doing! What jogged my thinking is that he mentioned WordPerfect of which I was a user for many years until recently. They are notorius for installing gobs of fonts and I don’t remember now if they ask your permission or not. There are many other apps like that, who install fonts that they “think” you’ll want, never to be used again! OK, this is getting old, so I’ll stop now…

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———————————————————————
OK, this is getting old, so I’ll stop now…
———————————————————————
Me too.

Joe

--Joe

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(Edited by st3333ve on 04-Jan-07 10:24. Updated to correct the link.)

I’m XP SP-2, and my WINDOWSFonts folder has 202 fonts, 48 of which were added after the initial Windows and Office XP installations (43 of them by WordPerfect). And I haven’t deleted any fonts. So that leads me to conclude that Windows XP doesn’t install more than 154 fonts by default.

As a follow-up to the back-and-forth with kaplinb, your first post mentioned that excessive fonts was the #2 system-slower. That’s consistent with what I’ve long understood to be the case — i.e., that the main downside to having too many fonts loaded isn’t the hard drive space they take up (which is relatively trivial), it’s the toll they take on the performance of font-using applications.

Finally, here’s a web page that purports to list the fonts installed by Windows XP. If you Google “fonts installed by Windows XP”, you get quite a few hits. Like kaplinb and Joe, I’d be inclined to leave all the Windows XP fonts there (especially since there aren’t that many of them).

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Prompted to look by this thread, I find 740 fonts in my fonts folder. If I just move some of them to another folder, is that enough to prevent Windows wasting time loading them unnecessarily? I am reluctant to delete them in case I find I want one of them and can’t remember which program’s installation disks it came with.

Ian

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Ian,

You can use a Font Manager to comtrol the installation and many other aspects of Fonts. I use the version of Fontlister. HTH

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The short answer is yes move them to another folder. See How To Install or Remove a Font in Windows for more information.

Joe

--Joe

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Here’s a handy tip for managing your fonts. Any time you’re installing additional fonts, first copy them to a sub-folder of the Fonts folder that you’ve created for that particular font source (e.g., if the fonts are from NewFontCo, copy the actual font files to a new WINDOWSFontsNewFontCo folder). Then, when you install the fonts into Windows, uncheck the “Copy fonts to Fonts folder” box. With that box unchecked, Windows will leave the font files in the sub-folder and simply create a shortcut in the Fonts folder for each font. This can be useful if someday you find yourself with 700 installed fonts and you want to know where the non-Windows ones came from.

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Ian,
As you see in my post 623,460 that’s just what I did. Moved them first and thus far have not had any programs complaining about a “lost” font. Running with 46 right now.

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Your link for ‘fonts installed by Windows XP’ is incorrect.

Joe

--Joe

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Hans,

I have deleted all those fonts and a large group of others, leaving a total of 46 fonts in the Fonts folder.
All seems to be working fine thus far without them.

Actually, I have moved those fonts to a temporary folder, in case I find I do need one.

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