I've been dealing with some headaches from time to time in managing fonts in Windows 7 and now with Windows 8 as well.
The built in font manager within Windows seems like an improvement over the one built into Windows XP. Fonts can be organized in groups. You get thumbnail views of fonts, which is handy when they come with cryptic numerical file names. The downside: most of the time Windows' font manager will NOT let you uninstall fonts. It gives some lame-brained excuse that the font is currently in use.
I've read up on various hacks one can use to get around this, hacks that take a bunch of time (write down the font file name, boot into safe mode with only a command prompt, change directories to the Windows\Fonts directory, type in the command to delete the file). That really stinks.
Bitstream Font Navigator can uninstall some of these fonts Windows refuses to delete. Unfortunately this app won't see a bunch of the fonts that are installed in the first place. Maybe I'm missing something, but this app doesn't appear to give the option to delete the font files from the Windows directory when uninstalling them.
Anyone else have any constructive thoughts on this issue? (other hacks in Windows to uninstall fonts, other font manager recommendations, etc.). Switching to Apple is not an option so I'm not interested in hearing that suggestion; just getting that one out of the way up front.
Note: I'm posting this in the "General Software" section since this has more to do with operating system issues than it really has to do with Fonts. And it might be easier to find this thread since the Fonts forum has so many Font ID requests coming in. This thread would get buried & lost there.
The built in font manager within Windows seems like an improvement over the one built into Windows XP. Fonts can be organized in groups. You get thumbnail views of fonts, which is handy when they come with cryptic numerical file names. The downside: most of the time Windows' font manager will NOT let you uninstall fonts. It gives some lame-brained excuse that the font is currently in use.
I've read up on various hacks one can use to get around this, hacks that take a bunch of time (write down the font file name, boot into safe mode with only a command prompt, change directories to the Windows\Fonts directory, type in the command to delete the file). That really stinks.
Bitstream Font Navigator can uninstall some of these fonts Windows refuses to delete. Unfortunately this app won't see a bunch of the fonts that are installed in the first place. Maybe I'm missing something, but this app doesn't appear to give the option to delete the font files from the Windows directory when uninstalling them.
Anyone else have any constructive thoughts on this issue? (other hacks in Windows to uninstall fonts, other font manager recommendations, etc.). Switching to Apple is not an option so I'm not interested in hearing that suggestion; just getting that one out of the way up front.
Note: I'm posting this in the "General Software" section since this has more to do with operating system issues than it really has to do with Fonts. And it might be easier to find this thread since the Fonts forum has so many Font ID requests coming in. This thread would get buried & lost there.