Deseret Tech

While using Windows 7 one day, I uninstalled a Google program (Google Earth, I think), and then all of my fonts were permanently italic, everywhere. I worked around this by following a tip from another user on a Google help site and installing arial32.exe every time I booted into Windows, which apparently reset something that got removed, but it would only last until the next reboot. That got tiring and didn’t work on everything, so I tried to make the fonts normal again.

I found a font fix for Windows Vista that looked plausible and applied it. Well, that didn’t go over well. All of my fonts were now broken, and I just got little squares and weird things. After trying to trawl through the registry and undo the fix I’d applied, I settled that I would need to do a repair installation.

So I put in the install disc, rebooted, and found out that at least on my disc, you can’t really do a repair installation. That was a waste of time and really lame. Do other Win 7 discs lack a repair install?

I tried to install PowerPoint Viewer because someone said that it contained all default Windows fonts. I’d hoped it would restore the registry keys. It didn’t. If you have deleted your actual fonts, this still might help, but it won’t fix registry problems.

Then the idea came to me that I had a Win 7 install in a virtual machine, and that I could grab the font keys from there and hopefully that would undo the big evil Vista fix as well as the italics problem. I exported the keys from the VM and applied on the native install, and it worked!

I’m attaching the registry fixes to this. If any of you have these problems with a Windows 7 install, remove:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontMapper\FamilyDefaults
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

and then apply win7_font_fix, which will restore Windows’s default font settings and fix things like permanent italics.

Of course, you should make always make a backup before you change the registry and I claim no responsibility for damage this fix may cause. This fix is not supported. Use it at your own risk. I hope it helps some people.

Once again, the link for that is win7_font_fix.