My new HP Pavilion Elite with Windows 7 has been working great, except for problems with distinguishing between read and unread emails in GMail when using Internet Explorer or Firefox, as well as italicized text being displayed instead of regular text. After doing some research, I found I wasn’t the only one with the GMail problem. Switching to Google Chrome solved the read/unread email problem, but the italicized text still remained.
I could live with the italicized text in the browser, but I wasn’t too happy when I opened a Word file in Arial font and also saw the text italicized. The problem finally came to a head when I installed TurboTax 2011, and then got this screen after trying to run the program.
The “click for solution” at the bottom of the window redirected to this web page. The solution was to go to the fonts directory and double click on those fonts to “re-register” them. But oddly enough, the fonts WEREN’T THERE!!!!
Then I found this page, which redirected to this page, giving the solution:
Seems to be something unique to HP’s installation of fonts on Windows 7.
I do setup on a number of computers and have noticed lately that some HP computers were displaying onscreen text in italics. I went through a number of support forums, tried adjusting fonts in Internet Explorer and on the desktop to no avail. I finally had a client that was unable to start a new copy of TurboTax because of missing fonts. Lo and behold, the installation of Windows 7 on his HP computer was missing Arial Regular, Verdana Regular and Verdana Bold.
Solution it to highlight, right click, and “install” the fonts from the following two directories:
C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-font-truetype-arial_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_ce7861d6c70c1a93
C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-font-truetype-verdana_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_1a6e14c718deeae7
Doing the above and rebooting allowed TurboTax to run and fixed the problems with italicized text showing instead of regular text. So what was happening the Arial Regular font couldn’t be found, so then it used Arial Italic as a second choice. It’s very shocking that a default install of Windows 7 wouldn’t have such a common font such as Arial!
Sure sounds like a bug with HP’s install. But weird that the font name starts with “amd64″ – is your processor an AMD? You aren’t running 64-bit Win7, right? Is it possible that the font files are missing too, that the amd64 files are not installed because they aren’t a match, but that installing them manually fills a gap and that they can be used even though they weren’t the intended ones?
Yes, it is 64-bit Windows 7 running on an AMD processor. It’s the folder names, not the font file names, which start with “amd64″ – inside those folders the font files have their normal names. It’s just that those three particular fonts aren’t also in C:\Windows\Fonts like they should be, right clicking on them and selecting “install” copies them there. Definitely an HP install bug.
You are running Win7 in 64-bit? My brief experience with 64-bit Windows was enough to realize it isn’t ready for the general user yet. There are too many holes in compatibility. And they didn’t do it right like Mac did – most people didn’t even realize when they upgraded that they went 64-bit native because the OS handles it. Win7 is a mess with 64-bit. And the font problem you have is almost certainly only a problem for 64-bit. Which begs the question – why the hell do the fonts care if the OS is running 64-bit or 32-bit!? Shouldn’t the OS manage that!? Anyway, I think my parting comment on the subject is this: your font weirdness will certainly not be the last problem you discover with your Win7 setup due to the 64-bit OS and any other problems you find, you should suspect the 64-bit OS to be at least partially involved in the problem.
Well, the font weirdness seems to be unique to this HP 64-bit Windows 7 install, so I think the blame is probably more on the HP OEM install rather than it being 64-bit Windows 7. But your point is taken about Windows 7 64-bit, though despite a few things like my old scanner being incompatible, I thought they worked out most of the 64-bit issues with Vista, and I haven’t had any other significant problems to date. My goal with a 64-bit system was to take advantage of the RAM over 3.3GB for video editing, but the main problem is that there’s very few programs that run in 64-bit.
Like I said initially, sounds like a bug with the HP install. But my previous comment is in partial defense of the bug – how hard is it for a manufacturer to keep track of needing different fonts for different processor companies and for different OS versions!? While the immediate error is HP’s, there’s definitely equal if not more blame on Microsoft for having a silly setup that requires different fonts for different architectures.