H E L P - Font Problem with CS1 & CS2

[TOUCH]

I hope you can help a long-term, regular lurker!

Using PC & XP I have recently bought a new Dell machine and installed Creative Suite 2 along with a number of fonts from my previous machine.

Whenever I open an existing / create a new Illustrator or Photoshop file, i can see the fonts in the list but when i select the type tool and click to start typing my machine freezes and the package needs killing off.

This happens each and every time and now even with none of the previously installed fonts to no avail.

I have tried removing and reinstalling CS2 and this hasn't helped.

All other tools work fine and all fonts work fine using other packages - eg. word, excel, powerpoint, outlook etc.

Any ideas would be most gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance.

[PrintDriver]

It's been a long while since working in Illy on a PC but do the fonts have to reside in the Adobe>Fonts folder rather than the PC font folder? Seems I used to have trouble with certain fonts if they weren't in the Adobe folder.

Also, Adobe CS+ products are very touchy about corrupt fonts. Do you have a font utility that will check them out?

[TOUCH]

thanks for your help.

i don't use a font utility - is there an industry standard one for PCs? i know that Mac users tend to use briefcase but is there one that works well with PC and adobe? i use illustrator, photoshop and indesign?

[jimking]

I think you mean Suitcase. We have ATM font managers on our pcs but they're dated and I don't think ATM is availalbe anymore but I could be wrong. I do believe there is Suitcase for the pcs however.

[Silence04]

there is a pretty good free one for PC from corel called FontNav... i don't know if they have it on there site anymore though...

how many fonts do you currently have installed?

[TOUCH]

there is a pretty good free one for PC from corel called FontNav... i don't know if they have it on there site anymore though...

how many fonts do you currently have installed?

around 1000-1500 so it is a bit on the large side.

admittedly i need to weed out some of the dregs from there but i it was doing it even when i only had around 500 or so.

[Silence04]

wow...That's your problem!
Photoshop (and even windows) can not function normally with more than 400 fonts active.

[TOUCH]

wow...That's your problem!
Photoshop (and even windows) can not function normally with more than 400 fonts active.

i have a couple of other machines in the office that each have around 1000 fonts on and both illustrator, photoshop, indesign etc. all work perfectly so i'm not sure that the number of fonts is the problem.

in fact, i've removed all fonts completely bar windows system fonts and it still doesn't work even after removing and then reinstalling adobe cs2. the same applies to CS2 aswell.

very odd and very frustrating.

anybody else have any clues??

[Sonic_Nerdish]

JimKing is right. There is a Suitcase for Windows machines.

[jimking]

Having a 1000 fonts active is a no-no. You should manage your fonts. You could create a document using a particular font, supply said fonts to a vender and very well become corrupt. Fonts can and do create havoc with computers. After removing these fonts, did you open an application to check and see what fonts are active?

[urstwile]

I don't know if PC's create this kind of file, but on the Mac, there's a file that gets created in multiple folders (application, etc.) titled Adobefnt.lst (something like that). Sometimes these files get corrupted. You can delete them (at least I've done this in the past when I've had trouble loading fonts with software on the Mac).

It's also possible that you have some corrupt font caches. Again, I'm on a Mac, so I couldn't possibly tell you where to look for files of this nature on a PC, but it sounds as if some type of font database file is corrupted, which could cause the problem when you try to access fonts in certain programs.

I would agree with others here, though, and say that having 1000 fonts open at all times is overkill and a system resources drain, not to mention that I can't imagine scrolling through a humongous font menu like that. I tend to keep as few fonts open as possible, and allow Suitcase to auto-activate others as need be, and then close them when they're no longer in use. I try to shoot for no more than 200 open at a time (including system fonts).