Removing foreign language fonts

Hi guys,

I think I found an easy way to get rid of those unwanted fonts. I am not sure if this will work on another machine because I messed around with the fonts a lot, even with Linux Fedora. So maybe something changed (see the *** paragraph in my answer below), but now I can easily remove the fonts with a batch file.

Besides from the obviuous advantage of my batch file, removing the fonts "in a batch", is that the batch filemoves the font-files to another folder instead of completely deleting them. That way, you can later browse that backup folder and reinstall any fonts you might need.

The batch files moves150 149 (!) font-files, which doesn't mean150 149 fonts, as some fonts are build as a font family which contains several *.ttf files, most times 4 files: regular, bold, italic, bold-italic.

Someone out there brave enough to test my batch file? Then please keep in mind  that I tested this on aGerman Windows 7 Ultimate system and that things might be different (named) in your (English) Windows, and accept thatI am not responsible if you mess up your Windows - but I think and hope it works out fine. Now here you go:

The following instructions and explanations are not up to date anymore , please read my post from March 15 below!

• First, create a new folder "2manyfonts" on the same drive/partition where your Windows folder is located. In my case, I have C:\Windows, the fonts are in C:\Windows\Fonts, and I created C:\2manyfonts
• Download my batch file_2mf.bat(or the zipped file ) and put it into your 2manyfonts folder (you created that folder, right?)
• Click theStart Orb(aka Start button ;-) ) and typecmd in the search box
• In the list above right-click oncmd.exeand choose Run as administrator
• In the command window, type "cd \2manyfonts" without the quotes
• Type "_2mf.bat X" and replace the X by the letter of your Windows partition, inmy case C, so I typed "_2mf.bat C", put a space before the drive letter
• Press Return/Enter
• When the batch is finished, which should just take a second, you should have 150 *.ttf files in your 2manyfiles folder.
• Please don't close the command window yet, but you can browse the folder in the Explorer if you want. Interestingly the font symbols now show latin letters…

If the batch file movedsome , but not all149 fonts for you, please type "dir /b > fontlist.txt" in the command window, this will create a list of all fonts in the 2manyfonts folder and post this list here or as a comment in my related blog articleHow to remove Windows 7 non-latin fontsso I can see which fonts wereprotected.

If you think I put too many or too less fonts in my moving list, please let me know which one(s).

*** As I said, I messed around with Linux on my system and created a Linux script that I used to move the fontsbeforeI tested the Windows batch file. Maybe the Windows batch file now works on my system just because Linux changed something, e.g. the ownership of the files.

In the latter case, there are still possibilities to move those fonts.

Best way is with a Live-CD, either a Linux or a Windows one, BartPE, VistaPE  or Windows PE to name a few. I can provide a documentation for that, too.

Or you could connect your Windows 7 harddrive to another computer or boot a parallel Windows on the same drive, if you have one, and start the batch file, in that case with different drive letters of course.

Regards

Martin Ihde

Freelancer for IT-support and webdesign

Support-Ing

For something so complicated, the lack of documentation is appalling. Come on Microsoft - at least give us a complete list showing what each font is intended for.

This list is a good place to start:

Font Supplied with Windows 7

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/product.aspx?PID=161

Looking at this list will give you an idea of which fonts are for non-Western character sets. You can click on a font to get more specific details about it.

Microsoft has a list of all the fonts fonts included with each of their products on this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/product.aspx

Select a product or OS and it will list the fonts.

-- Bryan

Take care! I nearly wrecked my Vista PC by removing unwanted foreign language fonts. A lot of the UI elements became garbled, and, worst of all, the Start Menu wouldn't open at all. I used takeown and cacls to allow me to delete the files. Then carefully copied the unwanted files to another directory and unregistered the originals with a font management program. I was careful not to mess with anything that looked important and I only deleted obvious foreign language fonts.

I still don't know what I did wrong. Fortunately, System Restore saved me and got the PC back to normal.

Questions for Microsoft. I read their earlier semi-apology. Clearly the proliferation of fonts has got completely out of hand.

But where is the documentation for the end user? People need to know which font is intended for which character set. What help is available to a typical user typing a document. He wants to try out a few different fonts, but doesn't know which to use. An exhaustive search of every font is bewildering.

An English user needs positive advice like "Don't waste your time trying to use Vrinda, Shruti, Raavi, and Tunga. They are not for you. Although they contain some English characters they are mainly for Indian scripts. The English characters are actually the same as the ones you've already got in font xxx."

For something so complicated, the lack of documentation is appalling. Come on Microsoft - at least give us a complete list showing what each font is intended for.

Chris, even if I go into the (for me) uncharted waters of ownership and permissions, I want to remove ALL fonts that are not English, or are NOT required for Microsoft and other after-market programs. 

Can I (we) get a list of such required fonts?