Expression Design Crashes when changing fonts

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:53:03 Z

Hello,

I have Expression Design 2 installed. When I try to choose a font, Expression Design crashes.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a new document
2. Click on "Text"
3. Click on the font combo box (the font window comes up, fully populated with font info, Segoe UI is selected by default)
4. Select "Arial"
**Crash**

I just noticed this happening yesterday. I've searched around, but have not found anything. No updates happening yesterday, but I havn't needed to use fonts in Design for a while. I have reinstalled the Expression Studio twice, and still havn't fixed the problem.

Is there a way to get this going? Is there some kind of Font Library that is messed up? Would CS4 be messing this up with all the fonts that it comes with?

Thanks!

Expression Design Crashes when changing fonts

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:16:39 Z

I'm not sure how this worked...

I decided to remove some fonts from my font folder. I copied out three fonts, then restarted expression design and the font dialog worked again.

I put those fonts back in the fonts folder and restarted expression design again and it still worked.

Is there an explanation for why this worked? Did I "rebuild" a catalog or db of fonts by doing this?

Expression Design Crashes when changing fonts

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:39:51 Z

Sometimes a font is corrupted which will cause Design to crash, but I wonder if this is your case since putting the fonts back didn't cause a crash again. I have no idea why it did that. Glad it's working for you, though. How do you like Expression Design?

Annie

Expression Design Crashes when changing fonts

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:57:21 Z

Hi j-ra,

I have solved the problem. Search the following folder: X:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Common\Fonts\ . Normally you find only the Segoe UI font, but into this folder you can copy the new fonts what you didn't find in the program.

Expression Design Crashes when changing fonts

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:06:51 Z

Fonts in the Windows fonts folder are normally protected by Windows file protection, meaning if a font gets removed, Windows will replace it from the file cache. Windows can also replace fonts that become corrupt based on checksum data, but if the font exists on a location on the hard drive that overlaps a bad sector or cluster then it may not be able to distinguish a corrupt font from a working font and thus you would have a crash. Fonts in this state usually have a size of 0 KB, or so I've seen. Overwriting the font file most likely forced a full overwrite of the font in question.

Another way to solve this problem would be to run CHKDSK /F from a command line and allow checkdisk to run the next time you reboot the machine. In fact, you might want you might want to do this anyway, j-ra, just as a preventative measure on your hard drive.

Will Buffington
Microsoft Expression Support