Expert: Amy - 12/13/2007

Question
hey amy,

i'm using illustrator CS2 on the pc and i have a problem at hand.

you see, everytime i use the type tool and type out things on one of the projects. i just can't save.

adobe illustrator would always say the same thing. "unknown error"... but other than that. when i'm designing. it's all good.

just that when i start putting text in - it'll go loco. sometimes, it'll boot me out to a restart mode on my pc.
i'm not a very happy camper right now.

help me out here.
thanks for your time.

bye.

Answer
HI there,

First troubleshooting step is ALWAYS to delete the AIprefs file.
1 - QUIT AI
2 - Locate the file on your machine called AIprefs. Move it to the desktop.
3 - RESTART AI. Is the problem solved?
4 - NO: QUIT AI and move AIprefs file back to its original location. When prompted to overwrite newer file, do so.
5 - YES: Wonderful. Throw desktop copy of AIprefs in the trash.

More likely in your case, you have a corrupt font or font cache.

If it's a bad cache, this will fix it:
1 - Quit ALL Adobe applications.
2 - Search for all files on your machine named adobefn*.lst where * is a number. Delete them. Make sure you only delete files that end in lst.
3 - Restart Illustrator.

If this doesn't fix it, you must go through the somewhat tedious process of looking for corrupt fonts on your computer. If you don't have a font management utility that can do this for you automatically, you do it in the following manner:
1 - QUIT AI
2 - Move all fonts from your Windows' fonts folder (except for the crucial system fonts) to another folder somewhere.
3 - Put one font set into fonts folder. Try Arial.
4 - Follow instructions above to rebuild cache. (optional)
5 - Restart AI. Does the problem still occur?
6 - Not fixed. If you still cannot save, then it is most likely NOT a corrupt font and you can move all your fonts back to FONTS folder.
6B - Fixed. If you CAN save, then it is now a matter of slowly putting the fonts back into the FONTS folder and restarting Illustrator until you find the one that causes the problem.

By the way, the problem is not only caused by your USING the font that is corrupt to do your typing, it's caused when any font is corrupt.

Try this and let me know how it goes!
Amy