Ian said:
I am wondering what the essential windows fonts are. I.E.
what fonts can I remove without messing up my windows
installation?
The only real answer is 'ones that the system or installed programs
expect to have available'. So if you have changed the font used for
Icons (say) to a weird script font, you need that one around. So check
in Display - Appearance, Advanced for the one in use for each Item
Leaving that point, the ones you should certainly keep are:
Arial
Courier and Courier New
Marlett (that is used for various symbols, like the X close box on
windows)
Lucida Sans and Lucida Console
MS Serif, MS Sans Serif and Microsoft Sans Serif
Script
Tahoma
Times
Verdana
Webdings
WingDings
things though like MS Reference will have been put there by (in that
case) Encarta.
One thing you can do is look at the Fonts folder in Details view, with
the Modification Date column available (check it in View - Choose
details if necessary). Then click in that column's header to sort, and
look at Modification date. Ones with 23 August 2001 will be ones that
came with the system, but by no means all of those are essential. OTOH
other ones now may be
Always operate by copying away any you think you do not need, before
deleting them. Then if a program gives trouble (usually by things
appearing in a weird font) you can try to identify which is missing and
reinstall it.
