Windows 7: Windows 7 Font Folder just shows 11 (Raster) Fonts

Hi,

I have a strange problem with my Windows 7 x64 Font Folder Control Panel:
If I take a look inside C:\Windows\Fonts there are about 265 fonts.
But the Font Folder Control Panel Applet shows just 11, all of them are raster fonts, no ttf, no OpenType.
All my fonts have corresponding entries in the registry, the font folder has the correct attributes +r+s
I am the Admin on my machine.



Did anyone of you already had a similar problem and found a solution for that?

The fonts are correctly installed an can be used in Word - But the Windows 7 Font Manager is completely malfunctional and I cannot copy and paste new fonts into the fonts control panel

Thanks in advance

Sincerely yours Oblomow

This seems to be fairly common from what I see with a Google search. One suggestion was to run System File Checker (sfc /scannow) from an elevated Command Prompt, see if that fixes the problem. See Brink's tutorial here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

I already googled for that ugly problems with the font folder.

The system file checker doesn't find any problems.

Today I installed some 100 fonts (go to the folder with the fonts, select all, right mouse button, Install)

All the fonts installed correctly, all of the new fonts are available in Word.

But the font folder just show the 11 ugly Bitmap fonts, no OTF.

Several people reported the same problem, but I did not find any solution.

I wan't to ask all the Microsoft Certified System Professionals, Engineers, Seniors, is there anywhere a checklist what can go wrong with the fonts control panel?

Thanks in advance

Sincerly yours Oblomow

Are they all listed in the registry under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

Easy way to check is to use the reg query command and pipe the output to a file:

reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" > fontlist.txt & notepad fontlist.txt

Mine looks like this:

fontlist.txt

Hi, Ztruker

Thank you very much for your reply.

As I have written in a earlier post, my C:\Windows\Fonts-Folder has the correct Attributes +r +s set and contains about 625 single fonts (most ttf, some otf-ps), It seems that all of them are registered correctly in the Registry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
and under
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
I have attached the exported registry key for your information.
All of the custom fonts installed by applications work correctly for example in Word or in Acrobat.

That is not the point.

But Windows 7 lacks the ability to manage my fonts via control panel / fonts applet, which just shows 11 families of raster fonts for the console.

Fonts can be installed even in masses by selecting them all and right clicking install.

Fonts can be deleted by deleting the font files in masses as Admin in the C:\Windows\Fonts Folder and later let the Registry clean using registry repair of the CCleaner freeware.

That works, but if I make a suggestion to a customer on those dirty tricky workarounds, I will here: That cannot be a serious platform for doing serios desktop publishing. Give us please immediately out MAC back!!

I have seen several references in MS social forums, where other people reported the exactly same problem as I have now: I have installed and am using numerous opentype/truetype fonts in applications, but fonts are not visible under Windows 7 Fonts Control Panel screen!?

This was during the last summer and I did not find a solution.

As I understand, that is not a problem of the Font system at all, it is just in the font management of the Fonts control panel applet.

I hope that someone experienced on those problems will read this and give my a hint for a solution

Best Regards

Sincerly yours Oblomow

That sounds like it should be very easy to fix. Wonder why MS has not done so yet? Lots of people have seen the problem so it should be reproducible.

Hi Ztuker,

In the meantime I did made some further investigations on that issue: There are several people on social.microsoft.com reporting exactly the same problem. Those reports are marked as "Solved" by the certified support people.
But the standard answer is either:
System Resore to an earlier state
System Repair Installation
Delete the Harddisk and Reinstall the OS

Listen, every week there are up to 10 new resore points genereated by some software - Every virus db update of the MS Security Essentials Virus DB generates an new restore point.
For space economy I delete them from time to time. Can you suggest me which of the hundreds of Restore Points does contain the right fonts?

No after some investigation I found out that the problem disappears (after a reboot), if you delete all those fonts, which are installed from outside of the C:\Windows\Fonts Folder. If you delete that references and reboot then it works.

And there is a second issue which causes the problem, it is a font conflict between the Office 2010 fonts and Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro:

Adobe installs a font family Lucida which is part of an old version of the Java JRE, used to display the console for text-based Java applets, path points to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Designer 8.2\jre\lib\fonts\LucidaBrightRegular.ttf
(eight fonts in total).

On the other hand we have the very modern software Office 2010, which includes some 100 modern fonts.
Those Office fonts follow the 8.3 nameing scheme from Win 98, possibly those are the System fonts of Windows 98! You got them for free with Office 2010!
An those Office-fonts also contain the Lucida Family:
The same Lucida Bright Regular Font is called LBRITE.TTF dated somewhere in 1999, no Unicode, no €-sign etc. (and installed) - That causes a font conflict, and the Control Panel Fonts Applet does just show the non conflicting raster fonts.

After making a font consolidation taking the Lucida family from the recent Java Runtime and installing the whole Family into C:\Windows\Fonts it works (after several of reboots).

If you have ne 1000s of fonts installed in your system, just those standard fonts from MS Office, Adobe and other vendors it is necessary to make some structure: I now try out the Suitcase Font Manager and the make some packages of fonts:

Install just the Windows 7 fonts into the Windows\Fonts directory
Office Fonts are stored in a seperate Folder and Adobe Fonts in a third.

But now I understand why professionals prefer the MAC als serious publishing plattform. It has a very nice font util offering to check and analyze fonts for corruption.

The MS tool looks nice, but is practically worthless, instable etc. If you habe to reboot after installing just one singular font - rediculous
As rediculous as the free Office Fonts
a) Unchanged since 1999
b) with a lack of OTF format - Even Adobe packs their Apps with OTF-Fonts
c) without Unicode
d) without the € sign

Best regards, Oblomow

Oblomow

Okay I think I shoudl of looked for issues witn windows 7 before installing my fonts
my problem is I did not look for this thread... bleh

I install 56,000 font package, without a probelm rebooted and now I had the same problems you guys explained, but I have another issues and maybe someone can explain how to resolve it.

my system take 3 mins to boots now, I assuming because I installed the fonts
how do it fix it ?

I did the fontlist.txt methos and yes they are all there!

Help please!

I have an exact diagnosis for this problem now. And a tool to address it with. The diagnosis is, as Oblomow58 says above, that there is a bug in Win 7 which is triggered by installing fonts from outside the Windows Fonts folder. But the key thing that makes the bug appear is the length of the path/file name of the font file. If it’s more than 129 characters long, then installing it will zap your Windows Folder, and all you’ll see is the raster fonts. Uninstalling the font and restarting fixes the problem. (I found this out by laborious trial and error – and I tested on 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and it’s the same on both). So, to repair your Windows Fonts folder, you only need to uninstall these particular fonts.

But, how to find them?

That is where my tool to address it can help. (And I know there are forum rules that say no advertising, but since my solution is available free and is addressed specifically at the subject of this thread I'm gonna take a chance and mention it) I’ve added logic to my font management program, FontRainbow (www.fontrainbow.com) to identify these files, so it’s very easy to find them, uninstall any that are installed, and move them to a different folder. There is a free 30-day trial version which you can do it with, so it won’t cost you anything!

Note – Oblomow58 above suggested that there was another thing triggering this bug, to do with conflicts, and the Lucida font. I have not seen that problem and my program does not address that at all.
Hope this helps (I have told Microsoft about this – whether they take any notice, well, we’ll see!)
Tony Wicks

Ok, any serious DTP is going to be using a third party font manager, there are tons of them. You do NOT want 56,000 fonts in your active font folder, what a nightmare! Do you really want to see 56,000 fonts show up in your font drop lists?

Search for "Windows 7 Font Manager" if you don't already have one with your DTP package.

If MS had included a complete font management solution they would have been sued AGAIN for providing "too much" functionality. And no single font management style would have worked for serious DTP people anyway...

(The path name bug should be fixed of course)