My fonts keep disappearing - HELP

A reformat fixes all problems. :)

anyone have anything less drastic to suggest?

There are couple possibilities. Here are two of the most common ones.

1. Disk failures or file system corruptions.
run a file system check and a disk surface check.

Start/run/chkdsk /R /x /F c:

2. There is some kind of agent (virus, spyware .etc), which mess up your fonts on startup.
Even though your virus scanner is up to date, you might still get viruses. There are new viruses coming out every second. Simple modification to the old virus will make them undetectable.

Try booting into save mode (F8 on startup). This will disable most startup processes.

Try repairing the fonts folder using TweakUI



<A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx" </A>

Something changed in your regs table.

Run command: regedit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
+ Software
++ Windows
+++ CurrentVersion
++++ Run

There's the list of programs your computer will run first. Double check if there something doubtful. If you don't know what those software, just google it. You will have your answers.

thanks people. I appreicate the input, but no luck.

1.tweak didn't work (i found the one for windows 2000) when I restarted, the fonts were missing again (re-install again!)
2. chkdsk /R /x /F c: doesn't work cause it can't lock the drive
3. I looked at the registry, and i don't know what's suppose to be there and what's not. the one's i googled were all suppose to be there.

any other suggestions?

msconfig is an easy way to check your settings if you are not comfortable with modifying the registry directly.

Download from http://www.perfectdrivers.com/howto/msconfig.html, I have done so before from this site so unless they have changed the download is safe.

Start -> run "msconfig" to run it. Go to startup tab and look for startup items there, uncheck ones you do not want, you can always reenable them afterwards.

chkdsk should have asked you if you wanted to check the drive the next time you start windows. That way it will run before windows officially starts...

Since chkdsk was instructed to scan for errors on the surface of the, physical, plasters. There for it requires lower level, uninterrupted access. Since windows constantly writing/reading from/to c drive, so when such scan is initiated, you have to answer Y. And restart the computer yourself… you just have to read the second half of the output...

There are not supposed to be anything in the registry, under that key, on a regular installation. Unless, you have some third party drivers…

There are 7-8 places, within a windows system, provide similar function as the registry key described above. Test all of them one by one just whole bunch extra work… By booting into save mode, continually, for couple times. You will be able to determine, if the problem is caused by a program in this group… then you can use an msconfig like tool to troubleshoot...

Hi,

Hmmm. I just noticed that you used McAffee? I recommend using AVG instead, I had McAfee and it didn't detect half the viruses AVG did. http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

Victor.

AVG is notorious for false positives, and in our internal testing it failed miserably against other programs such as Trend, Symantec, Sophos and McAfee both on the detect and on the memory management/file lock side of things. We use McAfee on the enterprise and single user level, have for years, and it has not let us down yet. YMMV may vary of course.

Version 9.0 is getting a little top heavy on the retail side, however, and we are looking at Trend Micro as a lightweight, though solid, alternative both on the desktop and enterprise scales.

scandisk came up with a clean volume. i used msconfig and found I had winupdate.exe, which is a virus and stopped that from starting up, but it didn't change anything. i had to reboot again, and still, no fonts. i'm now re-installing a few key fonts.

thanks everyone, i'm still trying some stuff, with no luck. any techies i can hire to come have a look? i'm in the west end.

Aviva,
Have you tried running Ad-Aware or something similar that looks for spyware? Sometimes spyware can cause just as many headaches as viruses, especially if they end up in the registry!

Hi,

I would love to help in person but personnaly am too busy with my present job. Have you tried this?

Go to Accessories->System Tools ->System Restore and restore
the computer to the state before this problem occurred, which is more than three days back in your case. I am in XP now but Win2000 should have something similar. Best of luck.

Victor.

ad aware found a bunch of stuff and helped, but didn't solve the problem. my fonts are still disappearing each time i restart, but now they take seconds to install instead of a minute each and sloooowwwwing down my system.

so at least i can turn it on and re-install some fonts instantly instead of waiting.

would still like to hire someone to figure this out. thanks to everyone for their ideas.. they all helped a bit.

thanks victorsk, but i don't have that option.

I will do it for free, if you are willing to be my reference. I have emailed my contact information to you via techvibes's mail system.

Well, seeing as you don't have any fonts, you might consider the new blank keyboard to round out the scenerio....

DALLAS - Typing on a Das Keyboard is a lot like typing on any other computer keyboard — except the keys are blank. Most people, especially those who rely on the slow but steady hunt-and-peck technique, might consider that a problem.

Not Daniel Guermeur, chief executive of Austin-based Metadot Corp. The self-proclaimed "uber geek" says he first came up with the idea for a blank keyboard while attending Stanford University in 1989. It was there that the French native noticed others typing much faster than he was.

"I was an OK typist but I was slowing down when I looked at the special characters," said Guermeur, 41. "One day I said, `If I could just improve my typing I could be much more efficient.'"

Two years ago, he built a prototype to test his hypothesis that a blank keyboard would force him to become a better typist. After many people asked him where he bought it, he decided to start making them commercially.

Sorry - too syncronistic to pass up.

::pd::

Seriously tho...

Sounds like a failing drive to me. Or Windows has become corrupt.
hmmmm... oxymoron?

::pd::

oops. spoke too soon, fonts are taking their usual slow time to install this morning. damn!!

How about setting the fonts and folder to read only?

One more thought on your problem. You may want to take a look at your event viewer (Control Panel. Admin tools) and look under Application. Look for Red Circles with White X's in the middle or Yellow Exclamation marks around the date when your font problem started. It won't solve the problem, but it might give you an idea of how the problem started. You might also want to run Ad aware again, and see if some more "pests" have gotten onto your system. [:((]

i can't set the fonts to read only because i can't see the fonts. even when i re-install every morning, the folder shows nothing, but at least i can see most of my stuff.

thanks for the info about the event viewer. nothing different happened in the last five days, unfortunately.

There might be some easy way like using small toolbox software. If you could find a Chinese, he might could find a toolbox named as 'super rabbit', which do good job on cleaning your registry and other processes while startup, as well as protection your computer from invasion. I was asked to clean adware for a Chinese friend whose computer (english version win2000) was effected not only his registry table but also some other traps. I got the worm out, after reboot the windows no less than 4 times. Though several days later, another adware caught him again, only because his computer didn't have enough protection even no anti-virus software, he got a 'surper rabbit' then everything worked fine.
I think there should be some other useful toolbox in english but I don't know sorry.

Okey, I find where the super rabbit is, a toolbox software made by Chinese (shareware). Though I cannot promise it will work definitely in your case.
http://www.superrsoft.com/eng/index.html

Have you tried to set the permission of the fonts directory/files to read only? Though this may not pinpoint why the fonts disappear, it may help to stop it from happening. Anything else would probably involve an onsite visit.

I'm having a professional come in tomorrow. I'll post her results on here.

Thanks to everyone for your help!

before my techie came over, I did some more research. One place said I may have too many fonts in the folder. Since I could not see them (in windows) to remove them, I had to go into DOS and remove all but the necessary ones. This allowed my to see my fonts in windows!! yay!! And I also set the folder attributes to +s +r but, however, it did not solve the problem because they weren't being recognized. before, i could copy over the basic fonts (again, even though they were there) and i could read my computer, now, they weren't taking affect.

my techie tried a few things (reg cleaner, safe mode), but since we couldn't read what was going on (everything was in marlett), we couldn't run them.

she did re-install SP4 (windows 2000 pro), but that did not fix the problem.

so finally we reinstalled windows and sp4 and that worked!

~ duplicate post ~

Congratulations!

so the final windows trouble terminator: reinstallation.

yes. but it's better than a re-format!

Now I have to reinstall my IIS, as it won't start up (get errors).

I wonder what else I'll find not working?

I had exactly the same problem three weeks ago (August 1, 2005) on my computer at work which uses Windows 2000 Pro.

The only fix which worked was to re-image the drive after saving my data files.

I suspect a virus, but Norton AntiVirus did not find any viruses.

--Bruce--

Hi,

It's great that you got your fonts problem solved. I read an article recently that a new computer virus was introduced to target W2K systems. And that was just around the time you started having problems.

Re-installing OS might have helped, but there might still be a virus hidden somewhere so I think it might be a good idea to run as many checks as possible to weed it out.

Oh, and it is probably a good idea to have a backup system in place like Ghost image or the like. W2K has very good backup procedures as I recall as well.

Good luck,
Victor.

uh, there's a chance that it could have to do with new win2000 updates. I've had some that caused bugs in certain programs and some that just made my computer act wierd. Now I use an older version of the service pack... but that requireds a reformat... a cheap way to do a reformat is to buy an external hard-drive and just move all your stuff back after the re-install. you'll still have to reinstall most things to get them back in registry... it may be worth the time in the long run.

I had the same problem. The solution was very easy. You needed to create back a registry key. The exact steps can be found at:
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/278/

backup all the fonts and then only have 1 or 2 on it. If it slows down, then it's more than just a font loading issue. check to see what is loading during startup as well. and when u do any of the disk utilities, get out of windows and boot from a disk and run it from there

nvm. was posting help, then saw page 2... [:)]

I am having the exact same problem in windows xp home. No virues found yet, but each time I restart, all my fonts are gone, and all i see is symbols. Has anyone found a solution yet?