As with most nerds, I am the first line of tech support for my immediate family. Sometimes it’s a PITA, but I am actually very happy to be in a position where I can help them out of computer purgatory.

So a few days ago, I got the usual support call from my folks: “The computer has gone bezerk! There are weird fonts everywhere!” Usually their problems sound much worse than they really are. Naturally, I figured someone had changed the font to something bizarre and couldn’t figure out how to switch it back - ought to take just a few minutes to fix up. But then, I logged into their PC remotely and saw this on the welcome screen:

I finished logging in and fired up IE, then giggle a bit:

“Boy, they’ve really done it this time”, I think. Thru some creative navigating, I am able to set some of the fonts to ’system’ (one of only two available fonts) which makes some stuff a bit more readable. Then I hop into the FONTS directory, only to find it completely empty. I guess Microsoft forgot to include the core OS fonts in the Windows File Protection feature.

No problem, I’ll just zip up my own fonts and transfer them over. That worked great, until a reboot - POW! No more fonts. OK, this is getting pretty annoying. Tried it again, same thing: XP looks great until a reboot. Must be that windows is somehow “fixing” my working FONTS directory by removing the foreign fonts I put there.

After a bit more tinkering and some colorful expletives, I finally decided to use System Restore and roll back. Luckily there was a restore point from a day or so back. I ran the rollback which fixed up the FONTS directory and solved the problem. Although I never did determine the root cause of this font tomfoolery, the last thing done to the system was the uninstallation of some programs which I suspect hosed the FONTS directory.

I love my folks, and whenever a tech support session is over, I always have a good laugh at the stuff that happens to their computer. They are always finding new and innovative methods of accidentally destroying Windows XP in ways I never thought possible!