Microsoft Word XP freezes after changing fonts

[chance1138]

One of our secretaries is having word XP freeze up on her any time she changes a font.

This is on an HP Laptop (I'll edit this tomorrow after she comes in and I can get exact specs) running Windows XP.

I have seen many other posts about Word freezing, but none seem related to fonts.

I will run updates first thing once she is back in this office, and I'll make sure that it isn't just a fluke thing. I'll also run the repair option from the control panel if it's still necessary.

I'm mostly just trying to see if anyone has heard of these issues so that I can get it up and running as fast as possible tomorrow when I actually get a chance to see the problem in action.

Thanks in advance for the replies!

 

[SNGX1275]

Never heard of it doing that. But my first step would be running Detect and Repair from the Help Menu (didn't know there was such a thing in control panel.)

 

[chance1138]

Yeah, when you go to "Add/Remove Programs," the same option is available under Change. It will probably be faster to do that from the Help Menu, though, so I'll do that. I really don't think this is going to be a big deal, but you know how people are:
"My computer is broken. Fix it."
"Have you.....blah blah......"
"No. That's your job."
*sigh*

 

[SNGX1275]

Well hopefully that fixed it. I've had unexpected crashes fixed with a detect and repair, but never tried it on anything else.

 

[chance1138]

Interestingly enough, today she says that it worked fine after a restart. So who knows what the issues is/was? I ran a repair anyway, just to be sure.

 

[DelJo63]

btw: fonts can be corrupted just like any other file.

when debugging fonts, I've used the split halves technique to find the bad one(s);

1. go to \windows
2. create a new folder _fonts
3. explore fonts\
4. select 1/2 of them (say the top half)
5. MOVE them to _fonts\
6. reboot the system and test fonts\
7. if the problem is gone, the the bad font was just moved to _fonts\
8. if the problem persists, it's still in fonts\
9. continue to relocate 1/2 of the remaining until you get clean and loop to step 5
10. the font in error will be in the set that was LAST relocated, so keep track
11. when you get clean like step-7, reverse the moves from _fonts\ to fonts\
    for the last set and move only one/time back. You're only restoring a small portion
    moved in step9, so it should not be a large list.
12. when the bad font is restored and tested, you will fail again, but now you
    know which one it is -- rename it xxx.bad.(ttf or whatever)
13. recover ALL fonts from _fonts
14. move xxx.bad.zzz to \windows\temp
15. reboot last time

Yea, it is tedious so be patient. It will discover the bad font.

A font file is a collection of 'strings' with the length of the string preceeding the data, eg Zabcdefg
where Z is a one byte binary value. If that value is wrong, the the string that
follows it will not be correct, eg ZabcdefgZmnbvc
Instead of reading Z as the length, one of the following bytes is taken and it's
all down hill from there

 

[chance1138]

Thanks for the reply jobeard. I'll use your technique if the problem presents itself again, regardless of how tedious it is!