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Windows 7 font management


caston81

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Hello,

I have a customer that is having huge problems with Windows 7 slowing to a crawl after they install all their fonts and I suspect the Windows 7 font manager is likely behind these issues.

They are using Windows 7 Pro 64-bit with 8gb RAM.

Is it possible to remove the Windows 7 font manager using vLite?

best regards,

Chris

Edited by caston81
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Much like Kelsenellenelvian said.

A few fonts don't normally slow down any version of Windows. But if you put a completely ridiculous amount (thousands) in it at the same time (tempting if you do graphic design of any kind), it will slow down to a crawl, no matter which version. It's been like that for as far as I can remember (Win95 at least, just the fonts from Corel Draw 7 made a high-end computer unusable). I can't think of any reason to blame this on built-in font manager either.

That is exactly there are elaborate font management systems like Suitcase Fusion 2 from Extensis (which is great BTW), where you make font sets to activate and deactivate as you need them.

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I have been suggesting such font management programs to them such as the one you suggested to me and another called font expert and another free one called AMP font viewer.

Here a link to a discussion of people having a similar problem:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproperf/thread/9482eee4-0a62-439a-9671-6603ed934faa

In particular one guy says "Low and behold, I can smoke 2 cigarettes before my computer will even make the "startup sound". Illustrator cs3, word, acrobat, and pretty much every darned program that uses fonts for creative work will freeze almost indefinitely on startup."

The customer was having huge issues with thing like their Mimaki Rasterlink program stopping working and only showing the Java logo when trying to start after installing all their fonts as well as other problems of really slow performance in their adobe illustrator (I think) application and the computer badly crashing that I thought I had traced the problem down to a loose motherboard heatsink and gave them a new motherboard and reinstalled W7 only to have the problem come back again once they reinstalled all their fonts. I did A LOT of testing on their RAM and HD, graphics card e.g. memtest86, samsung futil or hdutil, furmark, prime95 changed their optical drive and SATA cables you name it so I am very certain now the issue is with Windows 7 font management and is not a hardware issue.

If they can make those font programs work for them than that would be excellent but at the moment on Saturday I'm going to make a backup image of the machine in Macrium Reflect and I'm going to install Vista Business 64-bit to see if there fonts work much better than they do in Windows 7. All their other machines are running XP 32-bit and don't have any problems with all their fonts.

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I couldn't see anything about fixes to the font management system in the beta for Windows 7 Sp1

There are no updates for a system that isn't broken? Colour me surprised.

Obviously, you've chosen to completely ignore anything that was said in this thread, the history of this problem (Windows having behaved like that since pretty much forever), or the technical reasons that limit the number of fonts you'd want to use at once (it takes a lot of memory & CPU cycles to keep track of a ridiculously long list of fonts), and chose to blame Win 7 for it against all logic, and specifically the font management part of it, based on nothing at all. You've also chosen to ignore font management software that has existed for ages precisely for this.

for any real work use Linux or Mac.

Except both have the exact same "problem" (Macs also use the same type of font management software, BTW), except they have far less software (especially Linux) thus making them not so suitable for "real work" in the first place, and Linux also has horrible typography.

I have a bajillion fonts on this Win7 install, and it's working great (and really fast) -- thanks to Suitcase Fusion.

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Ah ok I suggested the customer try out three different font management programs including suitcase fusion but for some reason they still weren't happy so I suggested the only thing to do was to move them back to Vista. I didn't actually sit down myself with suitcase fusion so I don't know what it's like or what happened when they tried it. I did make a Macrium reflect image of the Windows 7 install first so if they are having problems with Vista I can investigate suitcase fusion more move them back to Windows 7. From memory I think their objection was "they had to many fonts to go in and disable the ones they were not using" but I told them to try it out and if they weren't happy I would move them to Vista and said there was no hurry and they had plenty of time. The whole point of supplying this machine was so they could use more than 4gb of RAM I didn't want to get embroiled in something that it outside of my support boundaries.

When I put Vista on I installed the free AMP font manager and told them they would have to use but but also told them I had never used it myself so couldn't teach them how to.

This is one of the e-mails that I sent them:

date Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 8:51 AM

subject Another font management program

Paul,

Many font management programs let you disable fonts for example:

http://www.extensis.com/en/products/suitcasefusion2/free-trial.jsp

best regards,

Chris

But maybe I should have tried it out myself and maybe I was being lazy by not doing so but I may be forced to eat my lazyness yet. Or maybe the business owner would rather me spill more of my precious hours than they would like to spend some of their precious money on more software I may never know.

My next step is to e-mail them and tell them that suitcase fusion is probably the go. I bet I will have to go back and move them to Windows 7 at some point because Vista it quite a dog. Very slow to shutdown and had a BSOD when trying to install incredimail for them.

I'll send them a link to this thread as well.

Edited by caston81
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Well, if I may :unsure:, if an OS is supposed to be used to have various fonts and is actually used for this scope (typography, desktop publishing, etc.), the fact that traditionally MS os (and Linux and MAC ;)) have not an "official" working method to manage a large number of fonts (and you need to use a third party utility) is not a good reason to say that Win 7 is perfect.

We can conclude that Windows 7 sucks at font management exactly like all previous Windows version did (and Linux and MAC do ). :ph34r:

@caston81

This kind of info is not exactly hidden

on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard"

:whistle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_management_software

A list of apps is in this article:

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2007/10/win_font_mgmt.html

:hello:

jaclaz

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if an OS is supposed to be used to have various fonts

To some extent it does, but too many at once just adds incredible overhead and easily brings any machine, running any OS, to its knees.

have not an "official" working method to manage a large number of fonts (and you need to use a third party utility)

Well, it's never been "official" indeed. But it's been common practice for a number of years for anyone who works in anything related to design in any sense to use font managers. I was using ATM Deluxe at the time (mainly with Corel Draw 7's fonts) on my Win95 box back then, but I recall ATM existing for Win 3.x before that. I'd say it's too much of a niche to introduce it as a feature in a mainstream OS. ~99.9% of the population have no use for it (so it doesn't make sense to make everyone incur the development cost), wouldn't understand any of it (complain about it being too complicated, useless, have problems with it, etc). Definitely not a big selling point for most people (I'd still love to see it built-in though)

is not a good reason to say that Win 7 is perfect.

I don't recall anyone calling anything perfect in this thread ;) But it's not "more broken" than previous versions of it (or other OS'es even) in any way, shape or form with regards to that. So I wouldn't expect a service pack (a bunch of bug fixes mainly) to include something so major.

We can conclude that Windows 7 sucks at font management exactly like all previous Windows version did (and Linux and MAC do ). :ph34r:

That's a way to see it. Nothing's perfect, nor is it ever going to be :)

From memory I think their objection was "they had to many fonts to go in and disable the ones they were not using"

You have to create font sets once, yeah. That will dramatically speed up whatever OS they're using though (Win 7 or otherwise) and make it easier to find a particular font. It really sucks scrolling through a ridiculous number of fonts when 99% are simply irrelevant. With a font manager you only activate the categories that are of interest to what you're doing. It's not that much hassle to use really. And in some cases (like with InDesign and Illustrator), the font manager will automatically activate the fonts for them when needed.

I've tried all the other font managers before, and IMO none comes close to suitcase fusion (v3 just came out 5 days ago seemingly -- soon with Photoshop support :thumbup , I'll probably try it sometime soon)

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Is it possible to remove the Windows 7 font manager using vLite?

From my understanding, it is not possible to do so. I remembered that some users here use WAIK to remove the fonts. It would be very much helpful if anyone can post a guide of using WAIK to remove WAIK. Presently, I just manually remove the fonts from the Font folder. Thus, although there are only about 40 fonts remaining in the folder, Windows and Microsoft Office remain fully functional as ever. :thumbup

Of course, it would be great if we can post a list of fonts that can be safely removed from Microsoft. I can post my list here if there is any need.

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