Lost fonts solution?

[Mayayana]

This is an odd problem I've had for many years. Periodically
XP loses many of my installed fonts and I have to reinstall
them. Then they seem to last for perhaps a few months and
get lost again. Most or all of the lost fonts are TrueType,
not noticeably different from the other fonts.

 

[VanguardLH]

This is an odd problem I've had for many years. Periodically
XP loses many of my installed fonts and I have to reinstall
them. Then they seem to last for perhaps a few months and
get lost again. Most or all of the lost fonts are TrueType,
not noticeably different from the other fonts.

Sounds like you use a cleanup tool every few months.

 

[Mayayana]

| > This is an odd problem I've had for many years. Periodically
| > XP loses many of my installed fonts and I have to reinstall
| > them. Then they seem to last for perhaps a few months and
| > get lost again. Most or all of the lost fonts are TrueType,
| > not noticeably different from the other fonts.
|
| Sounds like you use a cleanup tool every few months.

A cleanup tool? I've never used any cleanup tools, other
than a script to empty the TEMP folders. Even if I did,
I hope there's nothing out there nutty enough to "clean"
the fonts folder.

There's nothing I know of that does anything with fonts
one way or the other. That's what puzzles me. And there
doesn't seem to be any correlation between frequency of
use and deletion.

 

[Paul]

| > This is an odd problem I've had for many years. Periodically
| > XP loses many of my installed fonts and I have to reinstall
| > them. Then they seem to last for perhaps a few months and
| > get lost again. Most or all of the lost fonts are TrueType,
| > not noticeably different from the other fonts.
|
| Sounds like you use a cleanup tool every few months.

A cleanup tool? I've never used any cleanup tools, other
than a script to empty the TEMP folders. Even if I did,
I hope there's nothing out there nutty enough to "clean"
the fonts folder.

There's nothing I know of that does anything with fonts
one way or the other. That's what puzzles me. And there
doesn't seem to be any correlation between frequency of
use and deletion.

Do you use CorelDraw ? I seem to remember it
bundled a third party font manager of some sort.
That font manager is unlikely to do anything,
unless you run it and use it.

Paul

 

[Mayayana]

| Do you use CorelDraw ? I seem to remember it
| bundled a third party font manager of some sort.
| That font manager is unlikely to do anything,
| unless you run it and use it.
|

I bought PaintShopPro 16 awhile back, but this
issue goes back much further. It just happened
again today so I thought I'd ask whether anyone
else knew about it, but it's been happening for
years. I store all the fonts in my software/drivers
backup, so it's not a big deal to restore them, but
it's very odd.

I can't think of any software that might get
involved, and I would avoid enabling extras like
that anyway. I suppose maybe I could rig up a
monitor to catch next time it happens, but it
might be months from now.

 

[Paul]

| Do you use CorelDraw ? I seem to remember it
| bundled a third party font manager of some sort.
| That font manager is unlikely to do anything,
| unless you run it and use it.
|

I bought PaintShopPro 16 awhile back, but this
issue goes back much further. It just happened
again today so I thought I'd ask whether anyone
else knew about it, but it's been happening for
years. I store all the fonts in my software/drivers
backup, so it's not a big deal to restore them, but
it's very odd.

I can't think of any software that might get
involved, and I would avoid enabling extras like
that anyway. I suppose maybe I could rig up a
monitor to catch next time it happens, but it
might be months from now.

Are the fonts in question, part of a set ?

Or are they basic Microsoft fonts that come with every windows ?

Lots of things have an interest in fonts (read-only),
but maybe something aspires to be a font manager.

Paul

 

[GS]

I've been using PaintShop Pro for some years and I can verify it does
not mess with fonts. I also have extra fonts installed in XP Pro SP3
and none are missing!

--
Garry

Free usenet access at http://www.eternal-september.org
ClassicVB Users Regroup!
comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion

 

[VanguardLH]

|> This is an odd problem I've had for many years. Periodically
|> XP loses many of my installed fonts and I have to reinstall
|> them. Then they seem to last for perhaps a few months and
|> get lost again. Most or all of the lost fonts are TrueType,
|> not noticeably different from the other fonts.
|
| Sounds like you use a cleanup tool every few months.

A cleanup tool? I've never used any cleanup tools, other
than a script to empty the TEMP folders. Even if I did,
I hope there's nothing out there nutty enough to "clean"
the fonts folder.

There's nothing I know of that does anything with fonts
one way or the other. That's what puzzles me. And there
doesn't seem to be any correlation between frequency of
use and deletion.

It's unlikely that font files get defragmented so they remain in the
same physical location on the HDD with defrag after defrag (unless you
switch to a different defragger that uses different layouts for what
they think is the best layout). Have you run "chkdsk /r" on your OS
partition where are the fonts?

Many files on the HDD never move. All magnetic media suffers loss of
retentivity due to dipole stress. I probably get larger disks every few
years and the old ones get repartitioned and reformatted to become data
drives so the result is that all clusters get exercised anew; else, I'd
look at Spinrite or HDD Regenerator to "refresh" every part of the HDD
on really old HDDs. I haven't used Spinrite in over a decade (and only
trialed HDD Regenerator for a couple days) but back when I did use
SpinRite there was a "refresh" feature (which apparently later got
buried under some other function). It would copy the data from one
cluster to another cluster, update the file table to point at the new
cluster, exercise the old cluster (different write/wipe patterns), copy
the data back to the old cluster, and update the table to point at the
old cluster. This would refresh the bits, especially for statically
positioned files, to make sure the dipoles were properly aligned for
maximum differential strength. chkdsk doesn't do any of that but it
will read up to, I believe, 5 times a sector to make sure it is
readable. Actually, depending on recovery algorithms in the HDD's
firmware, the same spot might be read 15 times, or more. That means if
the data is read successfully 1 in 15 times then it's considered okay.
I'd prefer the first read to be successful.

Alas, neither Spinrite or HDD Regenerator are free. I've seen some
freebie HDD recovery tools but they don't mention refreshing the
platters. The dipole stress problem shouldn't be a problem until
sometime after 5 years and closer to 10 years so it depends on how old
is your HDD. I usually replace my HDDs long before that so waning
retentivity is not an issue with me.

 

[Mayayana]

| Are the fonts in question, part of a set ?
|
| Or are they basic Microsoft fonts that come with every windows ?
|

I don't think any MS fonts go missing. There are a
fair number that get lost, but the only one I'm certain
of offhand, because I use it off and on, is one called
Dolphin. It came with a scanner I bought around '99.
I can't see any difference between that and other fonts,
but there's not really much to compare other than font
type. Looking at MS's Verdana in a hex editor, that seems
to be signed, but I've never heard of non-signed fonts
being an issue.

 

[Mayayana]

| It's unlikely that font files get defragmented so they remain in the
| same physical location on the HDD with defrag after defrag (unless you
| switch to a different defragger that uses different layouts for what
| they think is the best layout). Have you run "chkdsk /r" on your OS
| partition where are the fonts?
|
| Many files on the HDD never move. All magnetic media suffers loss of
| retentivity due to dipole stress. I probably get larger disks every few
| years and the old ones get repartitioned and reformatted to become data
| drives so the result is that all clusters get exercised anew; else, I'd
| look at Spinrite or HDD Regenerator to "refresh" every part of the HDD
| on really old HDDs.

That's an interesting idea. I don't think it could
apply, though. My current HD is fairly new. I've
built new PCs about every 2-3 years. This problem
has gone on for years, though I can't say exactly
how many. And it always seems to be the same fonts,
though I can't say whether it happens every 3 months
or every 18 months. It's just a weird thing that I have
to fix once in a while. The sort of thing that makes
one scratch one's head and say, "What the.... oh, well",
and then forget about it until next time it happens.

I also don't know of any other corruption or disappearing
files. I used to defrag but generally don't anymore.
I had trouble with one program that froze and messed
up the system partway through. If I run analysis now
with Windows defrag it tells me defrag is not needed
and lists only a few fragmented files. I've never
paid a lot of attention to this, but it seems that XP
must have some sort of in-service defrag functionality.

 

[Mayayana]

| I've been using PaintShop Pro for some years and I can verify it does
| not mess with fonts. I also have extra fonts installed in XP Pro SP3
| and none are missing!

That's good to know. PSP is about the only
consistent factor I can think of over the years.
I've used PSP 5 since Win98 and now have it
installed next to PSP16. (The latter does more
but the former is easier for basic image editing.)

I use Libre Office for business -- receipts,
contracts, estiamtes, etc, and used to use
Open Office. But in general my only use of
fonts other than Verdana and Arial is in PSP.
I suppose it's possible that PSP5, specifically,
has some sort of bug (assuming your version is
not 5), but that would seem a rather odd and
"violent" bug.

 

[Paul]

| Are the fonts in question, part of a set ?
|
| Or are they basic Microsoft fonts that come with every windows ?
|

I don't think any MS fonts go missing. There are a
fair number that get lost, but the only one I'm certain
of offhand, because I use it off and on, is one called
Dolphin. It came with a scanner I bought around '99.
I can't see any difference between that and other fonts,
but there's not really much to compare other than font
type. Looking at MS's Verdana in a hex editor, that seems
to be signed, but I've never heard of non-signed fonts
being an issue.

I was screwing around with fonts the other day. And there
are some registry settings.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
"Segoe UI (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Bold (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Italic (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Bold Italic (TrueType)"=""

Those particular ones are added to the computer, by installing
Windows Live Mail. Each entry would be a file name, like
segoeui.ttf. I was setting them to empty strings, to "break" the
system of the habit of using them (and only WLM uses those).
If an intelligent tool was removing your files, I presume it
would also clean up the Registry as well (no longer a Dolphin
entry in the Registry). What I was doing, was experimenting with
ways to change font usage, on an application that doesn't allow
display font changes.

The other section I was using, is this one, and entries here are
only created (by something), when a remapping is desired. So I
made this one by hand, at the same time as blanking the other
entries.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes]
"Segoe UI"="Tahoma"

*******

You could try a scavenger like Photorec, to find the deleted ones.
At least, if they were recently deleted, and not a lot of writes
have happened to the file system yet.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_Formats_Recovered_By_PhotoRec

Paul

 

[Mayayana]

| If an intelligent tool was removing your files, I presume it
| would also clean up the Registry as well (no longer a Dolphin
| entry in the Registry).

I don't know. I wouldn't be able to check that until
next time they go missing. The Windows font enumeration
functions return fonts by device, such as printer or screen.
I suspect that's done by actually checking the files, but
I don't know.

| You could try a scavenger like Photorec, to find the deleted ones.

That's no problem. As noted earlier, I have backup
of all those fonts so I can just reinstall them all,
which copies them into the fonts folder. It's not
really a big dilemma. It's just very mysterious and
I thought maybe someone here would know about it.

 

[JJ]

That's no problem. As noted earlier, I have backup
of all those fonts so I can just reinstall them all,
which copies them into the fonts folder. It's not
really a big dilemma. It's just very mysterious and
I thought maybe someone here would know about it.

Are the fonts that got deleted always consistent? e.g.: font named "ABC"
always deleted but "DEF" always remain. Or is it random?

If it's consistent, you may want to create a simple VBScript that check a
list of font files and show a message when one is missing. Have it run every
24 hours via task scheduler.

 

[Mayayana]

| Are the fonts that got deleted always consistent? e.g.: font named "ABC"
| always deleted but "DEF" always remain. Or is it random?
|

I think they're always the same. I know at least one is.
But I use the whole collection only occasionally for graphics,
so it's hard to know which ones go missing. I thought of
maybe setting up some kind of monitor to track the deletion,
but I'm not sure I'm that ambitious. Such a monitor might
need to run for months, and it wouldn't help to just know
when a font is deleted if I don't know how.

 

[JJ]

| Are the fonts that got deleted always consistent? e.g.: font named "ABC"
| always deleted but "DEF" always remain. Or is it random?
|

I think they're always the same. I know at least one is.
But I use the whole collection only occasionally for graphics,
so it's hard to know which ones go missing. I thought of
maybe setting up some kind of monitor to track the deletion,
but I'm not sure I'm that ambitious. Such a monitor might
need to run for months, and it wouldn't help to just know
when a font is deleted if I don't know how.

You may want to enable Auditing on the "C:\Windows\Fonts" folder to log
Delete operations (available for NTFS drives only; may not be available in
XP Home edition). It will be logged into the Security Event Log. Log entries
will have the file name that got deleted, as well as the EXE file that
performed the delete operation.

I also use this method but for Create operation, to log my temporary folder
so that I would know which program created those junk files/subfolders.

 

[GS]

It happens that Mayayana formulated :

That's good to know. PSP is about the only
consistent factor I can think of over the years.
I've used PSP 5 since Win98 and now have it
installed next to PSP16. (The latter does more
but the former is easier for basic image editing.)

I use Libre Office for business -- receipts,
contracts, estiamtes, etc, and used to use
Open Office. But in general my only use of
fonts other than Verdana and Arial is in PSP.
I suppose it's possible that PSP5, specifically,
has some sort of bug (assuming your version is
not 5), but that would seem a rather odd and
"violent" bug.

I'm using PSP9, which I got for doing screen captures for my CHMs. I
now use RoboCapture but PSP is still my 1st choice for making
transparent GIFs!<g>

--
Garry

Free usenet access at http://www.eternal-september.org
ClassicVB Users Regroup!
comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion