Fonts Trouble: WinXP Dialog Boxes Are Huge And Hideous...

[lungnut2002]

Well, I am capable of doing some really moronic things. Let me get that
out of the way first.

I thought I'd clean up my fonts and started deleting them willy-nilly
from inside my Control Panel Fonts folder.

It was pretty clear that I had messed up right away (everything turned
to crap), so I went into my Recycle Bin and restored them all.
Everything seemed to be allright. Everything that is except dialog
boxes.

By dialog boxes I'm talking about when you do an ALT-CTRL-DEL to close
down a program that's crashed and Windows brings up a dialog box saying
stuff like "You Chose To Shut Down An Unresponsive Program". Also, I
have some small-ish, freeware programs (audio conversion software,
BitTornado, even Nero [when it's actually in burn mode) that seems to
use a GUI that is very similar to the Windows dialog boxes.

Well, these dialog boxes are now four times their original size, the
fonts inside are thick and black and in some cases the letters don't
even seem to fit inside the box (like there's a drawing problem going
on).

Obviously (well, to me anyway--that means it could be anything), these
programs and boxes are looking for some font that isn't there. What
could it be? This is driving me nuts and it's getting to the point
where I'm thinking I might do a clean install of Windows. Which is
terrible, because I just did a clean install two weeks ago.

Anybody out there have any clue as to how to get back to the nice,
clean dialog boxes that we all take for granted??? Thanks!

 

[Malke]

Well, I am capable of doing some really moronic things. Let me get
that out of the way first.

I thought I'd clean up my fonts and started deleting them willy-nilly
from inside my Control Panel Fonts folder.

It was pretty clear that I had messed up right away (everything turned
to crap), so I went into my Recycle Bin and restored them all.
Everything seemed to be allright. Everything that is except dialog
boxes.

Well, these dialog boxes are now four times their original size, the
fonts inside are thick and black and in some cases the letters don't
even seem to fit inside the box (like there's a drawing problem going
on).

(various snippages)

The first thing to do is try a System Restore to before you Got Busy.
Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore
Then "restore my computer to an earlier time". If that doesn't work, let
us know and we can go onto the next step.

Malke

 

[lungnut2002]

System Restore worked--Thanks a lot.

It's funny--I remember when I had so much disdain for System Restore.
It used to be part of my clean-install ritual to immediately turn it
off. But as cpu's have gotten faster and RAM has become more
inexpensive, I don't worry so much about those Windows services eating
up so much of the system's resouces.

Again, thanks...

 

[Malke]

System Restore worked--Thanks a lot.

It's funny--I remember when I had so much disdain for System Restore.
It used to be part of my clean-install ritual to immediately turn it
off. But as cpu's have gotten faster and RAM has become more
inexpensive, I don't worry so much about those Windows services eating
up so much of the system's resouces.

Again, thanks...

I'm glad it solved your problem. This is the sort of thing System
Restore is perfect for. It's really that hard drives have become so
large that leaving 1500MB or so set aside for SR is no big deal. Here
is a link to MVP Bert Kinney's page about SR in case you're interested:

http://bertk.mvps.org/index.html

A nice habit to get into when you feel like trying something new is to
set a System Restore point first.

Malke