http://smmeyer.com/scribble/?p=34
For some unknown reason (probably a badly written third party software) some of my applications were suddenly using a bold font in their dialog boxes. This sometimes resulted in options being hidden off the edge of the dialog window or description text being truncated. This was evident in the following places:
- the Download Accelerator Plus options window
- the clock in the task bar
- various applications’ About windows
- the list box label “class” in the Dreamweaver 8 properties inspector panel for tables (bad coding on the part of the Macromedia / Adobe programmers since the font specification is obviously wrong in the actual application)
Apart from a recommendation requiring an in-place upgrade of windows from the CD there appeared to be no other fixes that would work. I tried reinstalling the default XP fonts but this didn’t help. I then noticed after checking against the list of default windows fonts that I found here, that MS Sans Serif wasn’t listed in my Fonts folder. Then more googling revealed that MS Sans Serif is actually called sserife.fon and actually was in my Fonts folder so that couldn’t be the problem could it? Further research lead me to open Regedit from the run box to look at my registry and I saw that
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes
substitutes Helv with MS Sans Serif, but when I look at the list of fonts in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
there was no path reference to the MS Sans Serif font file. So does this mean that windows doesn’t know that it exists even if it’s in the Fonts folder? Ready to try anything, I created the string:
Name: MS Sans Serif
Type: REG_SZ
Data: sserife.fon (no path required if it’s in the Fonts folder)
I then closed Regedit and restarted Windows and voilà it was FIXED!!!
14 Comments
Hahhaaa, thnx mate! You are the greatest. I was living with the same problem, with bolded dialogs here and there, for like half a year… It was freaking me out and felt like it had an negative impact on moral aswell. But then today after finishing another project I said: – Damn I’m gonna find out once for all what the frekking problem is! And then I stumbled on your page and yes… now it works. Thnx a heap!
Thank you for that! This article really helps with bold fonts in Windows XP.
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Just upgraded to Outlook 2007 (from Outlook 2003) and can’t find MS Sans Sarif anymore. I think I need to go to regedit (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts) to add in the instructions so it can locate the font file – which is on my computer. Anyone know exactly how I do this (I miss the clean lines of MS Sans Sarif)?
Hi. Can you provide more details for us less computer literates?
I can get into regit no problem and under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts I have MS Sans Sarif listed as seife.fon.
And when I go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes I see “Helv REG_SV MS Sans Sarif” as Name, Type and Data respectively.
But I’m a little unclear as to what I do next. Do I right click in the left-side pane and add “new”? If you could provide step-by-step instructions, I’d be eternally grateful.
Dave,
I can’t assist with Office 2007 as my experience is limited there, but I’ll try do what I can. When you say you “can’t find MS Sans Serif” do you mean it is no longer in your C:Windows/Fonts folder?
In my Fonts folder it is listed as font name: MS Sans Serif font 8,10,12,14,18,24 (8514/a)and it’s actual file name is SSERIFF.FON
If it’s not there then using plain old Windows Search for that file name should get it for you and you can copy and paste into the Fonts folder. If Search doesn’t find it anywhere then you will need to restore it from your Windows XP installation disk (that’s another story).
The registry isn’t going to help you find it if you don’t know were it is so before I tell you to type XYZ in the registry please note that if this is the first time you’re using regedit.exe please be aware of the DANGER because there is no undo and one mistake can easily stuff up your whole system (meaning re-install windows and start from scratch kind of stuff up).
PS. are those typos in your comment or is yours really called MS Sans Sarif (not MS Sans Serif), and SEIFE.FON (not SSERIFF.FON)?
TNX!!!!
This was REALLY annoying the last 2 days
now it’s over!!!!
Great!
From now on: HopeFull Guy!
I have a similar problem. The difference is many of my fonts appear in italics. Do you have any ideas?
Shane, I was away in December and obviously missed your comment. I hope you have sorted it out. I did experience that particular problem when I had been messing around in my Fonts folder. I corrupted *something* and suddenly Arial Black was only italics. I don’t know whether this was your problem, but all I had to do was uninstall the font and reinstalled it from the Windows XP CD.
This will restore all your default fonts to the XP Font Folder:
Open a DOS Command Prompt and browse to the i386 folder on your CD and execute the following:
expand -r *.tt_ C:\WINDOWS\FONTS
Very helpful. Thanks!
trying to learn registry values…what does reg_sv or reg_sz mean?
or the string Reg_multi_sz
or,
tasklist_svc
it pops up everywhere, but I don’t get an exact definition…is it a well known acronym?
signed…uninformed….
Hiya
Please note that the correct font to be used here is the micross.ttf font rather than the fixed-size system fonts. This will scale and look better if font sizes change in response to changing the DPI settings for instance.
Peace
Worked perfect for me!
Thank you very much!
Thank you so much, this fixed the problem for me. Now the default font in my dialog boxes is not bold and fits properly.
Thank you so much great call.
FYI – I searched for SSERIFF.FON and while I waited went to the fonts folder to look manualy……..
The search found it but the file wasnt visible in the fonts folder (despite showing as being there).
I draged the file from the search to fonts it said installing and this fixed the issues.
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