corrupt fonts and font manager

phuschnickens

whatup. When my boss bought the company I work for (3 yrs ago), we inherited 4000 fonts or something. Many are definitely corrupt. We started using a font manager (Extensis Suitcase for Windows) to help with the problem. The way it works is by hosting all of the non system fonts away from c:\windows\fonts and allowing the ability to turn them on and off either manually or automatically as needed via a plugin for indesign and illustrator. The concept is great and it seems to work well... We still have too frequent crashes of indesign, though. I believe this is due to the corrupt fonts. I've made a decision to format and reinstall and I really want to come up with a fix for this problem before I do so. I'd love to weed out and delete the corrupt fonts or at least live in harmony with them. Anybody have ideas that could help?

XP SP3
2 gb ram
Indesign CS2
Extensis Suitcase 11.0.0.40

PS. When I installed the font manager, I already had all 4000 fonts installed in my windows font folder, so I believe a fresh install of Windows with the correct installation of the fonts with the font manager might work better than it does now.

primesuspect

I'm not too familiar with PC fonts, but on the Mac versions of suitcase there is a repair option. Does the PC version have a font scanner/fixer thing?

phuschnickens

primesuspect wrote:

I'm not too familiar with PC fonts, but on the Mac versions of suitcase there is a repair option. Does the PC version have a font scanner/fixer thing?

Nothing of the sort unfortunately... can you recommend any similar tools?

jkidwell

When you purchased Suitcase for Windows, a copy of Font Doctor should have come with your copy of Suitcase. Font Doctor is a tool that you can use to perform a scan of all of your fonts and repair any problems.

If you are having problems locating your serial number for Font Doctor, please contact our Customer Service department:
http://www.extensis.com/en/customerservice/index.jsp

One thing to note is that if you have an original copy of your font from the foundry, it is always a better choice to replace a potentially corrupt file with a clean copy from the foundry, than to attempt repair.

Regards,

Jim Kidwell
Extensis

phuschnickens

jkidwell wrote:

When you purchased Suitcase for Windows, a copy of Font Doctor should have come with your copy of Suitcase. Font Doctor is a tool that you can use to perform a scan of all of your fonts and repair any problems.

If you are having problems locating your serial number for Font Doctor, please contact our Customer Service department:
http://www.extensis.com/en/customerservice/index.jsp

One thing to note is that if you have an original copy of your font from the foundry, it is always a better choice to replace a potentially corrupt file with a clean copy from the foundry, than to attempt repair.

Regards,

Jim Kidwell
Extensis

Wow, joined icrontic just to help me. Thanks.. and welcome.

primesuspect

Welcome to Icrontic, Jim! Thank you so much for signing up to help with this!

jkidwell

primesuspect wrote:

Welcome to Icrontic, Jim! Thank you so much for signing up to help with this!

My pleasure. Always like it when I can help.

Jim

Thrax

Welcome to IC, Jim! We really appreciate when vendors take time out of their busy schedules to appreciably assist our members. We hope to see more of you in the future.

phuschnickens

I found font doctor on my computer and am figuring it out... looks like this will help... i ran thru a check and it found something like 1000 bad fonts or something... looks like there's a way to move the bad fonts into another folder during the scan or simply delete, but apparently i didn't get it right on the first scan. More to look at when i'm not so busy. Thanks again and thanks again to icrontic.