Fonts - Change

Hello Zanestein, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Other than using some 3rd party skinning program like "Windows Blinds", the only options are the ones in the tutorial on the first page that I know of.

following option 2 i changed both to arial. and set default to arial too.
still some buttons and fields showed font called mingliu:
-on startup when asking to log in
-programs like notebook, ff ...

so in regedit-fonts i changed the data of that font to arial. and now arial pretends to be mingliu.
It worked, i have arial everywhere now. but I think it might slow things down when i have it set up like that.
i would like to know why the system is using mingliu and where to change it.

thanks

Hello Sodance, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Yeah, unfortunately not all of the fonts can be changed without using a 3rd party skinning program (ex: WindowsBlind). A program will usually always use it's own set of fonts instead.

Hello Shawn, is it also possible to change the User Logon Fonts ?

Hello Edrik,

Not sure about how to change the fonts for that, but you can change the shadowing around the log on text.

Log On Screen Text Shadow - Change

I managed to find a registry hack that will change all the fonts everywhere in Windows 7, including the logon screen, system information etc etc. Essentially it redirects Windows to the font file you specify when it's looking for MS Sans Serif, or Segoe UI for example. Thanks to Chris Pirillo of chris.pirillo.com.
In the folowing example I used Constantia but you can choose any font you want.
Important: in the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts] part, make sure you have the actual filename of the font. You can find it by opening the font folder, double clicking the font you want, and then right click on the font and selecting "Properties". Bold, Italics etc all have slightly different names so make sure you get them right. I would recommend creating a restore point before doing this, just in case.
Copy and paste the following into notebook, change the Constantia, constan.ttf, constanb.ttf etc etc to whatever you want, save as a .reg file and voila!

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes]
"MS Shell Dlg 2"="Constantia"
"MS Shell Dlg"="Constantia"
"MS Sans Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24"="Constantia"
"MS Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24"="Constantia"
"MS Sans Serif"="Constantia"
"System"="Constantia"
"Microsoft Sans Serif"="Constantia"
"Tahoma"="Constantia"
"MS Serif"="Constantia"
"Arial"="Constantia"
"Segoe UI"="Constantia"
"Times New Roman"="Constantia"
"Times"="Constantia"
"Small Fonts"="Constantia"
"Tms Rmn"="Constantia"



[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
"Arial (TrueType)"="constan.ttf"
"Arial Italic (TrueType)"="constani.ttf"
"Arial Bold (TrueType)"="constanb.ttf"
"Arial Bold Italic (TrueType)"="constanz.ttf"
"Times New Roman (TrueType)"="constan.ttf"
"Times New Roman Italic (TrueType)"="constani.ttf"
"Times New Roman Bold (TrueType)"="constanb.ttf"
"Times New Roman Bold Italic (TrueType)"="constanz.ttf"
"Tahoma (TrueType)"="constan.ttf"
"Tahoma Bold (TrueType)"="constanb.ttf"
"Segoe UI (TrueType)"="constan.ttf"
"Segoe UI Bold (TrueType)"="constanb.ttf"
"Segoe UI Italic (TrueType)"="constani.ttf"
"Segoe UI Bold Italic (TrueType)"="constanz.ttf"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\MuiCache]
"@themeui.dll,-2037"="{Constantia, 8 pt}"
"@themeui.dll,-2038"="{Constantia, 8 pt}"
"@themeui.dll,-2039"="{Constantia, 8 pt}"
"@themeui.dll,-2040"="{Constantia, 8 pt}"
"@themeui.dll,-2041"="{Constantia, 8 pt}"
"@themeui.dll,-2042"="{Constantia, 8 pt}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontMapper\FamilyDefaults]
"Swiss"="Constantia"
"Roman"="Constantia"

Cheers!

EDIT:I should point out that this will also change the fonts in some, but not all, programs.