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I have a custom font installed on a computer with Win 7 Professional.

There is an Italic and a Regular face:

  1. MyFont.otf
  2. MyFont-Italic.otf

When I list the C:\Windows\Fonts folder using dir MyFont* only these two fonts are listed.

However when I open the Fonts folder in Control Panel, there is one font family listed as "MyFont" but opening up the family, there are 2 icons, 2 for each of the above .otf files. (Note: of course there are no other fonts called MyFont on the system.)

When I right-click them and look at their properties, they are duplicates and point to the same file respectively, in C:\Windows\Fonts.

The first thing I noted that there were more than one otf file in the folder when I listed it (i.e. more than one copy of the font file was installed). Then I deleted it and made sure only the 2 files above are in the folder, but I still had 4 icons.

Why is this behavior? And how do I remove the duplicate icons in the Control Panel / Fonts folder?

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  • Are these fonts that you have created, or could you post them to be examined?
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 9:33
  • @harrymc A version of them are downloadable: dafontfree.net/freefonts-fedra-serif-a-pro-f62175.htm and dafontfree.net/freefonts-fedra-serif-a-pro-f62172.htm
    – ib11
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 17:43
  • I don't have this problem: The Properties of "Fedra Serif A Pro Normal" points to FedraSerifPro A Normal.otf and that of "Fedra Serif A Pro Semi Light Italic" to FedraSerifPro A BookItalic.otf. However, there was a little gotcha when downloading, as both wanted to download with the same file-name of fedra-serif-a-pro.zip. Might this be related to the duplicated properties?
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 18:01
  • @harrymc Nope. The situation is as above in the OP. You can try to make a copy of the two otf files and name them with a different name. Then install it twice (it seems that this is what happened every time the system acted up), then even if you remove all 4 files and only install the 2 that you had originally you will get 4 icons. This is exactly the behavior I can't fathom and solve. I suspect that it is dependent upon the user rights but no certainty.
    – ib11
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 19:59
  • Please spell out in your post exactly the procedure to duplicate the problem. It seems to me that you are saying that you installed the font twice, but I can't reproduce it. The font's attributes are stored inside the font file and a rename of the file is not enough to make it a new font.
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 20:34

1 Answer 1

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Windows rejects duplicate fonts, so something pretty weird must have been done. The font's attributes are stored inside the font file and a rename of the font installation file is not enough to make it a new font.

The only explanation I can find is that two versions of the font were installed with the same file-name. Their attributes were nearly identical, but not identical enough for Windows to detect that this was a duplicate. Windows checked only the font's attributes and ignored the fact that the file-name was already in use by another installed font.

This is the only explanation I can think of for a font's file being used twice, which apparently sabotaged the normal process of deleting a font.

I note that the poster had to boot in Safe Mode to the Command Prompt in order to get rid of the duplicate font file.

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8
  • That would make sense, but does not give the answer why the 4 shortcut icons still remain and all point to the same 2 files that are left. And how to "repair" this corruption.
    – ib11
    Commented Mar 27, 2019 at 14:40
  • I would say delete all this mess and reinstall.
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 27, 2019 at 16:53
  • Reinstall the OS? LOL Reinstalling the font did not fix it.
    – ib11
    Commented Mar 27, 2019 at 19:36
  • I said delete all traces for all occurrences of the font, then reboot and reinstall it.
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 27, 2019 at 21:42
  • Thanks. I did that. Same. 4 icons. Must be some other corruption. Anyway I can live with it. In case you get a better idea, I will keep checking back here.
    – ib11
    Commented Mar 28, 2019 at 0:02

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