3

Just curious but not dare to try out, what will happen if I delete all fonts in windows FONTS folder?

Will the system menu,layout containing characters just disappear? Or does windows have some backup unknown font in some hidden place to avoid such condition?

If there's backup font, what then will happen if I delete it as well?

Improve this question
1
  • If I preface with Dont Try This at home without a backup, I have deleted what would easily delete with the system runnning, to clean-up in both XP and 7, the very important ones did not delete easily. I had a routine for deleting then fixing the registry then re-putting back only the originals, and my desired set. I do not think there are any embedded (in like a dll or in part of the kernel) fonts, so if you managed to destroy them all you would be left glyphless, and unsymbolised :-)
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Aug 29, 2014 at 8:20

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

Missing fonts

The system will simply fail to load if the Fonts folder is empty or missing entirely. In Windows XP, for example, you would get this error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing
or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\vgaoem.fon

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup
using the original Setup CD-ROM.
Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair.

At the very least the vgaoem.fon file needs to be available; earlier versions such as Windows 95 also require vgasys.fon. And if there's no other font, everything will look some kind of retro game.

Improve this answer
1
  • Great answer with details. I'm glad that somebody tried this so that I don't need to risk to get the answer.
    – Felix
    Commented Sep 1, 2014 at 2:12
0

I saw once on YouTube where someone tried to destroy a Windows XP Virtual Machine (of course, being a VM, it could have behaved differently from a physical installation) by deleting all the system fonts. After doing so, the Start button was rendered with a question mark in lieu of the 'Start' label. Additionally, Windows failed to draw the text on system dialogs due to its lack of font resources, so dialog boxes and buttons were rendered blank. Plus, it caused performance issues, causing the system to run very slowly.

Also in this video, I did see that Windows regenerated some of its basic fonts, such as MS Sans Serif, Times New Roman, Arial, Impact (as I seem to recall), and a few others, but I still would avoid doing it due to the critical issues it would cause.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .