Big problem with fonts and crashing >_<

[Stewie]

Not sure if I'm in the right section, but I figure if I'm not, someone here can point me in the right direction.

Note: This morning, I noticed that mIRC (my IRC client of choice) was running a bit slow (locking up every 30 secs or so, for a few seconds). This is just a tidbit of information, as I'm not sure it's related to my issue.

I'm working on a new logo for a product I'm designing and decided that Gotham wasn't right, nor were any of the fonts in my system. So, I moseyed on over to The Pirate Bay and downloaded 2GB worth of fonts (65,000 of them!) and installed almost all of them (59,173). It took about twenty minutes but succeeded with no errors.

I then noticed my computer was running a bit laggy, and thought, "Well, the fonts probably just need a restart to load into memory properly," so I restarted. After waiting... who knows... ten minutes for my computer to boot, it took only a few minutes before my desktop became completely unresponsive (except mouse movement)... then finally the mouse cratered also.

It was at this point that I noticed I had only 117MB of space left on C (whoops!). I quickly axed some stuff off there and got it to a clean 7GB, which I planned to resolve further at a later point. This was not the issue as only minutes later, it crashed again.

First thought: Let's get everything I need off my C drive (I have D, E, and F drives also) so I can reformat or take it in to the computer techs if necessary. Managed to reboot and get a few important things off before it hung again. (Worth noting I tried a third time, in Safe Mode.)

So, I grabbed my Windows disc and threw it in, booted to it, and tried to restore--sadly, the ONLY restore was about a half hour AFTER I installed the fonts (when I was uninstalling stuff). Restored with no issue, but the crash came back.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get rid of the fonts from my harddrive. But, in both Safe Mode and otherwise, the font list does not load. I open the folder, it loads... loads... green bar progresses... and it finally loads--all of zero fonts. So I can't remove them.

I quickly downloaded AMP Font Viewer, hoping it could delete some fonts for me. (Note: Unlike Windows, it DID find the fonts.) However, I noticed that, not only did it take ages to load the fonts to a point where I could use the program, it could not batch delete fonts. It would take far too long to delete 59,173 fonts one at a time, so I gave up on that.

TL;DR: So here I am. Here are my questions:
* Are the 60,000 fonts the culprit for the slowdown/crashes?
* Is there a way to remove all the non-system fonts? (This has to be quick, say, 2min or less, and cannot rely on opening the Fonts folder.)
* Do I need to reformat? (Last resort.)

Thanks to everyone in advance... this has made for a heckuva' long day.

Specs (ASUS G73JW-A1 laptop): Core i7 (2.6GHz, I think), nVidia 460M 1.5GB GPU, 2x 500GB HDD (each partitioned to make C-F drives), Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit. Anything else, just ask.

 

[seth500]

There's no telling what those fonts from the pirate bay may have done to your pc they could have installed malware on your computer and since you can't do a system restore thats out of the question and yes 65000 fonts is a heck of a lot of font's and it would slow things down considerably especially on a laptop and would most likely be the cause of it crashing.

Is there a way to delete the non-system fonts? Only if you knew which was which and without opening the folder I would doubt it but you would have to mount the drive with a program in dos mode and delete that way.

Your best bet would be to delete them from windows little by little if you can by selecting a few and deleting them. If you can't by any other means I would do a clean install and go from there.

 

[Stewie]

Thanks for the reply, Seth;

I stumbled across a program called FontFrenzy which was able to remove all non-system fonts. However, it has left some odd side-effects: namely, the directory still reads that it has 20,282 files in it as well as being 1.42GB in size. However, I can view the Fonts folder directly now, and none of these are listed (only 647 system fonts).

I'm currently trying to hotswap the fonts folder through the Windows setup command line with one containing ONLY the system files. (No luck yet! "ren Fonts FontsBKP" in C:
Windows says the file cannot be found.)

 

[SlasherIT]

You most certainly do not need a complete re-install of Windows 7.

You can delete the font's easily if that's what you want to do. Before telling you that though, I suggest you that if is possible to do, run a MBAM Malwarebytes : Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a free download that removes viruses and malware from your computer scan in Safe Mode, to check and kill all viruses. If this is not possible, or if it is successful, proceed to using Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper Beta | Microsoft Connect, which will do another scan for malware, but not in Windows, but in a bootable Windows PE environment, allowing it to catch tougher threats. Do this first, and if this does not fix it, reply back and we'll try and proceed to deleting the fonts (pretty easy).

Slasher

 

[zsxd45]

Not sure if I'm in the right section, but I figure if I'm not, someone here can point me in the right direction.

Note: This morning, I noticed that mIRC (my IRC client of choice) was running a bit slow (locking up every 30 secs or so, for a few seconds). This is just a tidbit of information, as I'm not sure it's related to my issue.

I'm working on a new logo for a product I'm designing and decided that Gotham wasn't right, nor were any of the fonts in my system. So, I moseyed on over to The Pirate Bay and downloaded 2GB worth of fonts (65,000 of them!) and installed almost all of them (59,173). It took about twenty minutes but succeeded with no errors.

I then noticed my computer was running a bit laggy, and thought, "Well, the fonts probably just need a restart to load into memory properly," so I restarted. After waiting... who knows... ten minutes for my computer to boot, it took only a few minutes before my desktop became completely unresponsive (except mouse movement)... then finally the mouse cratered also.

It was at this point that I noticed I had only 117MB of space left on C (whoops!). I quickly axed some stuff off there and got it to a clean 7GB, which I planned to resolve further at a later point. This was not the issue as only minutes later, it crashed again.

First thought: Let's get everything I need off my C drive (I have D, E, and F drives also) so I can reformat or take it in to the computer techs if necessary. Managed to reboot and get a few important things off before it hung again. (Worth noting I tried a third time, in Safe Mode.)

So, I grabbed my Windows disc and threw it in, booted to it, and tried to restore--sadly, the ONLY restore was about a half hour AFTER I installed the fonts (when I was uninstalling stuff). Restored with no issue, but the crash came back.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get rid of the fonts from my harddrive. But, in both Safe Mode and otherwise, the font list does not load. I open the folder, it loads... loads... green bar progresses... and it finally loads--all of zero fonts. So I can't remove them.

I quickly downloaded AMP Font Viewer, hoping it could delete some fonts for me. (Note: Unlike Windows, it DID find the fonts.) However, I noticed that, not only did it take ages to load the fonts to a point where I could use the program, it could not batch delete fonts. It would take far too long to delete 59,173 fonts one at a time, so I gave up on that.

TL;DR: So here I am. Here are my questions:
* Are the 60,000 fonts the culprit for the slowdown/crashes?
* Is there a way to remove all the non-system fonts? (This has to be quick, say, 2min or less, and cannot rely on opening the Fonts folder.)
* Do I need to reformat? (Last resort.)

Thanks to everyone in advance... this has made for a heckuva' long day.

Specs (ASUS G73JW-A1 laptop): Core i7 (2.6GHz, I think), nVidia 460M 1.5GB GPU, 2x 500GB HDD (each partitioned to make C-F drives), Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit. Anything else, just ask.

Get Some Anti Virus?

 

[Stewie]

I've run MalwareBytes and ClamWin, and I'm clean.

I managed to get rid of all the font files from the Fonts directory. Startup time has been slightly affected but no damage otherwise. Crashes have stopped.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice!

 

[SlasherIT]

You could have easily just booted off an Ubuntu Live CD, go into your primary Windows Harddrive, Windows\Fonts and delete all the fonts form there .

 

[Stewie]

I guess that would work, too. Thanks anyway though!

 

[SlasherIT]

No problem .