Having font issues in ALL browsers

Win7 x64 on a Dell Latitude E6550 (i7 2720QM)


This is a recent issue and goes across 3 browsers (Chrome, FireFox and Palemoon).


I'm in an MLB chatroom, and there are several font style to choose from. But recently, the ones called Comic, Handwriting and Papyrus all look the same. I think Comic is the one that is correct.


Everything looks fine on the chat app and on 2 different Android browsers, so I reckon the problem is on my laptop and in Windows.


I've tried everything I could find online. Restore Default Font Settings, Adjust Clear Type Text. I tried fiddling with browser settings before that, with no results of course.


I have Allegro font installed, but could I be missing basics Windows fonts for "handwriting" and Payrus?


All the other chatroom fonts available display correctly.

If you type in fonts in the windows search box you can see what fonts are installed. I don't see any of those fonts in my Windows 7 install except Comic Sans MS.

You may need those fonts installed in Windows, however, the MLB chat room should have been smart enough to query a Google font so no font required on your part. I'd have to see their code to confirm. Another thing you can try absent of not installing those specific fonts is to clear the font cache. Ways to Clear Font Cache on Windows

I wouldn't use their program option. I couldn't find a better source. It's like everything is for Windows 10 even though I specifically stated 7 in my search results. Grand conspiracy I tell you! LOL

OK. I did all the steps I could because my Windows Font Cache Service was disabled (not by me).


So I set that to Automatic (Delayed) start but didn't start it.


No Font Cache folder under C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache (probably due to the service being disabled), but I did delete some font related files in the Local folder.


Deleted FNTCACHE.DAT and restarted.


I can now see the Papyrus font in the chat, because I do have that one installed on my system and I always had Comic Sans.


I'm not sure of the font I need for "handwriting" as there are a lot of them. I have Allegro installed, but that doesn't seem to be the one since I still see Comic instead of Handwriting.


So far, everything has work so thanks. Any ideas on the generic "handwriting" font?


So, allowing the browser to choose it's own fonts still always requires the font to be installed in Windows? Does my phone have all those fonts?


ETA: Lucida Handwriting seems to have done the trick as far as the go-to handwriting font. Now I notice the phone uses handwriting in place of Papyrus.

arpharazon said:

Any ideas on the generic "handwriting" font?

Yes I do. I see you may have found it, but in the future try the font squirrel website to identify a font. It may be hit or miss depending on if the website can A) identify the font and B) the quality of the image taken allows correct identification. Identify Fonts - The Font Squirrel Matcherator

If you don't know already, you can take a snap shot of your screen from withen Windows in one of three ways:

1) Start typing the word snipping tool in the Windows search box and open the snipping tool. Now you can crop on a specific portion of your screen that you want an image from. In this case the text of that font you just can't seem to identify. After you save the image upload it to the font squirrel website for possible identification. To get technical, this process is called optical character recognition (OCR). There are Apps for mobile devices and phones that can use OCR as well. Some are better than others.

2) To take a full screen shot of the monitor press the Print Screen button on your keyboard. Now go into the paint program or your favorite paint-like program such as Photoshop or what ever and go to File
| Paste. Now you can crop the parts of an image you need from the screen grab.

3) There are many third party programs out there that offer screen grab ability. One website I like to visit that offers all kinds of goodies both free and paid is snapfiles.com In there just search using a search term like, "snipping" without the quotes and I'm sure you'll find lots of hits.

arpharazon said:

So, allowing the browser to choose it's own fonts still always requires the font to be installed in Windows?

Yes and no. I'm not completely sure on this, but I think a browser just uses the fonts you have installed on your computer. In fact, I may be right because I have my own website and I know that if I use a font that is not installed in my computer it will not parse. How websites can get around that issue is by using something called Google Fonts. This is a bit of code added to the website's webpage and when you go to the webpage the font the web developer wants you to see will automatically pull from Google and render it on your screen without the need for you to have that specific font installed on your computer. I do this myself for four addition fonts on my website that users can chose from in the font selection of their posts. That way the other users don't have to have that font installed on their computer and the font will always show up as its suppose to on screen.

The fact three browsers didn't show the font on your computer meant you needed that font installed on your computer.

arpharazon said:

Does my phone have all those fonts?

I don't think fonts are installed in a phone or tablet, but rather pull from Google or some other cloud service like Samsung, etc. This is how I said about my website where the font is rendered on your screen because the font code on the webpage is pulled from Google. This is also true for all those similes and gifs you may use for your text messages, tweets and emails. There's a server that hosts all those.

arpharazon said:

Now I notice the phone uses handwriting in place of Papyrus.

That could just be a code identification issue or something. Nothing you can do I'm sure.

Do you have an exact link to this MLB chat room? If it's possible I can look at its web code and see if they use Google fonts at all. They really should seen as how the fonts you described are certainly not packed with a default Windows 7 installation. Though, they may be with Windows 10. I'm not sure. If they do use Google Fonts, then you may have something blocking that either on your computer or in your browser. The actual domain is fonts.google.com. If that domain is blocked for some reason that could be why fonts don't render. In fact, you indicated the fonts render in your phone but not on your computer which leads me to believe you may be blocking the Google fonts domain somehow. But seen as how you installed the fonts yourself in your computer there's no need for the Google Fonts link fetch. You're not using some kind of Ad blocker, Java Script blocker, etc? I doubt it, but an anti-virus product may do it as well. Anti-virus software now-a-days is packed full of all kinds of fluff so you never know.


Now taking a screenshot on your phone or tablet requires you to search for that Info. on Google or the user manual. There would be a combination of keys you'd press and hold and each device is different. Then you need a good file manager App. Go into the file manager App and under "recent" or "photos" your screen grab should be there. You can transfer it off the phone via the cloud if you use it or plugging your phone into your computer and navigating to the phone's storage. The folder you're looking for may be DCIM or it could be photos. It just depends. Once you have the image from your phone you can load it into paint, Photoshop, etc and use the rectangle, lasso or comparable tool to just grab the bit of the picture containing the font image to upload to one of these font identification websites.


Here's a few other font search engines from Google results.

Fontspring Matcherator :: Find Fonts From An Image

Font Finder 🔎 by What Font Is

Now I have to add something important. First, after you ID a font you'll have to search for it and hopefully can find it free. The aforementioned font squirrel website does seem to offer free fonts.

Now the important part. Malware can be laced with fonts. So before you decide to will-nilly double click the font adding it to your Windows font folder, scan it at Virus Total. Even though you may have anti-virus software. Virus Total uses a bunch of anti-virus engines and gets malware samples from the U.S. Cyber Command so if the font has malware laced in it, there's a good chance it may be identified by virus total.