Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 1/19/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi there,

I am having the worst time trying to figure out an issue with AICS2 & it's loading of fonts. Onnly since this morning, does it load ONLY what appears to be Asian only fonts. No other fonts load - see pic attached, I have expanded entire list digitally for clarity).

All I can think that has changed:
- Installed Avast Anti-Virus (Have since uninstalled).
- Have upgraded Adobe Reader > Ver. 9 (in attempt to fix this issue)

My System:
Sony Vaio
3GB Ram
Plenty HDD space
Windows Vista Home Premium


Nothing else has changed. I've researched Vista font issues, I've tried removing possible corrupts fonts, but with over 1800 fonts installed I just don't have the capacity to do them all (I'm self employed and burning precious hours getting to the bottom of this). I've rebooted a million times, I've tried deleting the Asian fonts (Vista won't allow me as they're system fonts). I've deleted the pref files, have run a search but returned nothing looking for the LST files (so as to delete them) I've repaired, and reinstalled Illustrator into a new directory.

Up until only several hours ago has the software been working perfectly. As far as I know, no ew fonts have been installed. This appears to be out of the blue.

Please, if you have ANY idea as to how to resolve this issue I'd be most indebted to you. I have wasted so much time already and I have work due to clients - I'm desperate for a solution to this issue,

Thank you,

Jordan


ANSWER: Hi Jordan

Your answer is in your question. You have 1800 fonts installed which is too many for your system to handle.

Honestly your system shouldn't even startup with that many fonts actively running.

You need to install a font management application (Suitcase or Font Explorer, etc.) which will turn these unnecessary fonts off and will only activate the fonts you need or want. Once these are under control, AI should be able to load the active fonts.

Sorry to say but fonts are not managed in Vista and can be hard to control without a font mgmt. app.

Thanks

Kevin

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Kevin, I appreciate your response, thank you.

I hear what you're saying, it is a lot and did take me a little by surprise when I discovered this. However, I've not installed any new fonts in a long time, the system and AI has been running beautifully and without any issues up until 48 hours ago.



I've noticed in AI, that all fonts on the system are accesible via the Type > Font > Drop down, but only a select few are appearing in the Fonts/Character pallette.

Apon further investigation, I've been able to ascertain that all fonts that appear in the pallette, are listed in the adobefnt10.lst files that appears here:

c:/Users/jordan/AppData/Local/Adobe/TypSpt/

I've searched and deleted all LST files relating to AI without any succcess, but my investigations have led me to beleive it's a fault in the way that file is being cooked up every time Illustrator starts.

My next guess would be that there's possibly a corrupted font file that is causing this process to go awry? I am waiting until a quiet afternoon before I go through and disable all non-system fonts via my newly aquired font mgmt program, and begin working through it, but in the mean time, you don't know of any of the internal processes AI goes through to generate this file do you? Woudl you think it is caused by a corrupted font or ccoudl there be another reason?

Thanks again for your time,

Jordan.

Answer
Hi Jordan,

Your guess is a pretty good one. Since you can access via the font drop down, and not via the  character palette, I would ascertain that it is a corrupt font. An easy way to find out which one is sometimes the last font you can see is the one before the corrupted font alphabetically. This isnt a guaranty, but it has worked at times.

A lot of times installing an antivirus app will not necessarily corrupt fonts, but will make them act strange when it catalogs your files (I've had one change some fonts extensions to .zip files for some reason.) So I'm thinking that was the cause, but even after uninstall, the damage is done.

You are also correct on the solution, I would organize the fonts via the font mgr. leaving only Vista system fonts and Adobe fonts open and then start to activate a few at a time in order to find the culprit. A lot of times, the font app will recognize a corrupted font for you.

Good luck!

Thanks

Kevin