🚀 go-pugleaf

Have you considered the possibility that the font files are, in fact, invalid? XP and W2K are a lot more picky about fonts than previous Windows OSs and will reject dodgy fonts. Does this affect all your fonts or just some? Were they free fonts downloaded from the net? If so, they may well be badly pirated copies or just badly made amateur efforts. I've not heard before of the registry fix not working, so I wouldn't place my suspicions there, especially since you reinstalled Windows. Can you load these fonts on other PCs?

In addition to Dominic's comments, are both the .pfm and associated 
.pfb files in the same folder that you're installing from?

There are MANY older Type 1 font files, including some from reputable 
quality vendors, that XP balks at. They can often be repaired by 
passing them through something like Transtype or FontLab (just opening 
them and saving them). There are some fonts whose names need to be 
changed because of length or the presence of invalid characters.

  - Herb

Thanks for the quick responses. I failed to mention that the fonts are legit, and to be sure there were no problems with the files I installed them on another computer with XP and had no problems. I also downloaded a free font from fontshop.com and had the same problem. I really only have two font sets that I need to install (Helvetica and TheSans), but the problem is occuring with anything I try to install.

You might try re-instlling ATM Light 4.1. Download a fresh copy and 
reboot after instllation.

I use it happily under XP (silly reasons - I like being able to click 
on either the .pfm OR the .pfb to display a font and a couple of minor 
others)


  - Herb

I just reloaded ATM Light 4.1, rebooted, same error message I mentioend earlier....

And when I try to install it through the Windows font folder I get the same message from that approach that I mentioned earlier.

Trying it both ways, when I open the directory where the fonts are, whether it's the d: drive or a folder on my hard drive where I also have them, ATM and Windows pulls them up in the list to be added, but then when I select all of them and hit ok, it gives me the error code for every different font I try to load (plain, italics, bold, caps, etc.)

I'm not sure I'm going to find a solution, but I really do appreciate the feedback.

Thanks,
Tom

I just reloaded ATM Light 4.1, rebooted, same error message I mentioned earlier....

And when I try to install it through the Windows font folder I get the same message from that approach that I mentioned earlier.

Trying it both ways, when I open the directory where the fonts are, whether it's the d: drive or a folder on my hard drive where I also have them, ATM and Windows pulls them up in the list to be added, but then when I select all of them and hit ok, it gives me the error code for every different font I try to load (plain, italics, bold, caps, etc.)

I'm not sure I'm going to find a solution, but I really do appreciate the feedback.

Thanks,
Tom

Can you install OT and TT fonts okay? If you just need to use the T1 fonts in the Adobe apps, you could install them in the Adobe fonts folder, but at the moment I'm guessing that you're looking at a reinstall of Windows.

Aaarrrrrgggggg.........DOH! I'm a moron...

Well, I realized on of the other things that happened when I rolled back to pre-SP2, was my video drivers died. So, finally it dawned on my to take the basic troubleshooting step of VGA mode and boom, type 1 fonts installing again. Never believe the error message I suppose.

I haven't reinstalled ATM yet, but I might as well, now that I can remove it and restore the windows registry entries blindfolded.

Anyway, rolled my video drivers waaaayyyyyy back to the last set issued by HP for this machine, and those are working.
Some of the basics of the failure case:

NVIDIA Quadro FX2000 running Nvidia supplied drivers v.176.04_quadro_winxp2k_english_whql w/Dual LCDs at 1680x1050

Windows 2003 Server Standard SP2
HP XW8000 Workstation

The success case:
Same as above except NVIDIA drivers are HP supplied:
sp31860 - 72.13 Rev. B (7 Dec 2005).exe

Note to self, don't ever forget to try VGA first again....although I'm sure if another 9 years go by without it solving anything, I'll forget again.

PS: (no pun intended) ATMD 4.1 works fine now too).

Glad you figured it out and thanks for posting the solution.

Hi guys, sorry it's been so long since my posting....I've been reloading Windows!

Thanks to Gary's comments I've found the root cause of my problems but I still don't have a final solution.

I'm running

Windows XP SP2D
Dell 4300 Precision Laptop
nVidia Quadro FX 360M
Dell 2005FPW monitor

I re-formatted the hard drive, loaded XP and started loading the misc. drivers I got from Dell's website. I go to the video driver and thought maybe I should load the fonts first. Nah, I went ahead and loaded the nVidia driver. I tried to load the fonts. Wouldn't work. So I uninstalled the nVidia driver and presto the fonts loaded no problems. So I re-loaded the nVidia driver and the fonts wouldn't come up in any of the programs I use (Word, Quark, etc.). I can see them in the fonts folder, but when I double click on them I can an error message (__.PFB was not a valid font file). Remove nVidia and the fonts work fine, but my monitor perforamnce is horrible.

So nVidia is clearly the problem. I went to nVidia's website to see if I could download a driver from them and they only have "partner certified drivers" available. I tried the ones listed for Adobe, but they didn't work.

Do either of you have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Tom

I am having the same problem with new laptop we just got in.
Specs:
Dell Precision M6300
nVidia Quadro FX 3600

It works on all our other Precision M90s and such. Those all probably do not have the newest driver.

I am gonna start playing with drivers and I will post back here what I find.

Thomas, the XP version you are loading, is it Dell's preloaded XP or is an off the shelf XP?

I would most humbly recommend that you contact nVidia and complain to them. You have some fairly convincing evidence that their driver and/or accompanying "added value" (ha ha) software is mucking around in the system somewhere where it shouldn't be!

- Dov

On the Dell site on the download page for the video drivers there should be a link in the upper right that says "Other Versions" that will lead you to a list of past drivers.

This is not fun at all, but I think your best bet is to uninstall the nvidia drivers you have now, and start at the oldest and work forward until it breaks again. The safest way to do this is to add/remove programs on the nvidia drivers and restart each time you load a new set (I confess I'm not always very careful about that process, but evidently I just love increasing my frustration index to the maximum tolerably level).

If absolutely none of the drivers provided by Dell solve the problem, you'll likely have to go hunting around the net for even older drivers. Like I said, the version that ended up working for me was pretty far back there and just happened to be the most recent provided by HP (since this machine is several years old they apparently stopped updating them).

In the meantime I suppose we both should shoot a mail to nvidia (though they tend to have little interest in supporting integrated or vendor supplied video cards vs. their own retail products). Understandably, that is part of the deal. They sell the cards to the integrator at wholesale becuase the integrator is supposed to carry the support costs (kind of like when PhotoDeluxe or some odd consumer product is bundled with every wacky scanner and camera on the market). So far so good on my old drivers, and I just discovered they have "windowshade" like functionality in addition to single click monitor moves in the title bar, which is sweet...

Good luck, video conflicts are always a heart ache...

I looked at the Dell site and it only lists one other video driver for the card in this troublesome laptop. One from Feb of this year. I am doubting that will fix it. :(

Oh what's even better is nVidia doesn't even list the card at all. I am not sure when it was introduced, but I got a feeling it's goint to be some hard searching.

For me, I can install any .ttf without a problem (at least the few I tried). It seems to be only effecting .pfm/.pfb

I am going to install the older driver this afternoon and get back with what I find.

Start with the laptop model and drill down. That will get you to:
 <http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/previousversions.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&SystemID=WRK_NBK_PNT_P4_M4300&releaseid=R191014&vercnt=5&deviceid=13675&formatcnt=1&releasetype=DRVR&servicetag=&catid=-1&libid=6&impid=-1&osl=en&os=WW1>

Which has 4 available downloads.

Also, Nvidia techinically doesn't list my card either, these are integrated chipsets and they expect HP/Dell who-ever to support and provide drivers for them.

I am running a 6300 not a 4300.
That link is for 360 not 3600.

Here is my driver link. Only one.
 <http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/previousversions.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&SystemID=PREC_M6300&releaseid=R189269&vercnt=2&deviceid=16260&formatcnt=1&releasetype=DRVR&servicetag=&catid=-1&libid=6&impid=-1&osl=en&os=WLH>

ahh...rough break. I was looking at Thomas's model. Sorry...

I suspect (and can't be sure since I don't see the machines) that the 3600 in a laptop is being called a 360M since the link for Thomas's laptop model lead to the 360M. Probably worth a call to Dell to find out (and who knows they might have other drivers they can direct you to).

Wow, so I uninstalled the current driver from 6/10.
It allowed me to install the fonts.

So I installed the only listed older driver from 2/26. And it worked!

Just to make sure, I uninstalled that driver (2/26) and reinstalled the newest one (6/10), and it broke it again.

What do you guys think, should I talk to Dell support or nVidia or both?

I have yet to read what is new in the updated driver, but at least I have a functional computer now.

Thanks for the help guys!

Rockin' and congrats...

Probably both nVidia and Dell. Also, it's kind of funny that the "Partner Certified" drivers didn't work, but as I recall any fonts that were already installed were working in my apps and I didn't notice a problem until I went to try to add additional fonts, so it is possible the "certification" process missed the step of adding a Type 1 font (or since our Type 1's are destined to be replaced with the new open type fonts, Type 1 confirmation wasn't part of the process at all). I think all 4 vendors involved (including MS) should have some interest in making this work and Win 2k3 SP2 did include a new version of atmfd.dll and atmlib.dll from Adobe, so somebody, somewhere is still in this code.

I can't say this is the strangest video issue I've ever seen, but it is definitely up there. Since the failure blames the font, the code must be assuming any error at all while adding the font is related to the font files. When I was troubleshooting this and looking through some of the dev docs I did notice the GDI.exe is tied to the font activation process (a very old font related hot fix in Win2k included atmfd.dll, atmlib.dll and dern near all of the GDI components), and that is what first kick started my brain back to the basic TS step of checking for a video conflict. So much for the Hardware Abstraction Layer I suppose. I'm sure things would be worse without it (think Win 3.1), but I do wish it was little more robust in its defense against driver related weirdnesses.

No problem, I'm glad we all found a resolution (and who knows, maybe Adobe will add an item to their "partner certification" check list).

Thanks for working this out. It helped me with the same problem on a Dell Precision M70 laptop on which the IT people installed a new operating system after a crash (XP). I went to the Dell Drivers site you indicated, navigated to the M70 video drivers, downloaded the old one there (2006), and installed it.

After running the driver's .exe install program, I also had to 'roll back' (rather than 'update') the driver using the display tools in the control panel.

Now my Type 1 fonts install without a .pfm error, and I'm able to complete the projects I was half-way through.

Dell Latitude E6500
nVidia Quadro NVS 160M
Windows XP Pro SP3

I installed drivers from <http://download.laptopvideo2go.com/nvidia/175series/17808.exe> (mobile driver 178.08), helped me with fonts but broke GPU in Photoshop. Anyway, for me it's better than the official driver.

As Dell uses 176.26, the problem should disappear as soon as an updated driver becomes available.

SOLVED!

I found new Nvidia drivers at: <http://laptopvideo2go.com>

The 178.15 driver works with my Dell E6500 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M) running Windows XP Professional! Yeah!

I did need to download the specialized INF file before the driver would recognize my video card.

Photoshop's GPU feature works now too. With the older Dell driver, selecting the GPU drawing feature didn't seem to make much difference with speed. With the new driver, re-draws and zooming are FAST!

Hello, I have spent nearly a week trying to figure out this type 1 fonts problem. Just wanted to say how helpful this post was to finally solve my problem. I actually had IT bring back my old machine to be able to do my work. I really appreciate the help everyone shares here. I wish I had looked for this sooner. I've learned my lesson, check the Adobe forum first!!
Thanks to you all.

Hi everyone,
I just wanted to chime in and say that I'm having the same problem with a new HP EliteBook 8730w with an NVidia FX 2700M card. I sent a Type 1 font over to an HP support person (who has been very responsive and understanding) and he had the same problem. He said they would be contacting NVidia to see if they have a new driver. I was told they had recently had a user with a similar problem (but with OpenType fonts) so hopefully something is in the works.

On a hunch, I uninstalled the video driver and attempted to install the type 1 fonts in VGA mode. I was able to install the fonts without a problem when the video driver was not installed.

I then installed an older version driver and left the fonts on, to see if any of my programs would be able to use these fonts. It was a mixed bag. Some programs recognized them, some didn't, and some only recognized the base version (but not the bold, extended, light, oblique, etc versions).

Programs that recognized the full font family:
Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign

Programs that didn't recognized any of the fonts:
Flash

Programs that only recognized the base version font:
Word
PowerPoint

I then uninstalled the older version and re-installed the newest version and the results were the same.

I doubt any of the info will actually help anyone, but I thought it was interesting how the different programs were affected by the video driver.

Dave -

When a font family has the four specific styles regular, bold, italic, 
and bold italic, MS Office and most other non-Adobe application 
products display ONLY the regular (or normal or base) name in a font 
list. The bold and italic versions are accessed by applying the "B" 
and/or "I" or changing the text attributes (properties).

A downside of that approach is that there's no way to tell if the font 
has the alternate styles available - because if it DOESN'T, a faux 
bold or faux italic will be created.

Adobe products list each font file separately in their font lists.

Some font families don't use the font and style naming conventions in 
a way compatible with the MS/Windows approach - for example, a font 
with a style "Light", will confuse Windows unless it's given a unique 
FAMILY name. That's an oversimplification; there are some excellent 
texts available on the subject.

All of which has little or nothing to do with the inability to install 
the fonts in the first place. They're two separate and distinct issues!

  - Herb

Thanks for the info Herb. You learn something new every day.

      A downside of that approach is that there's no way to tell if the font
      has the alternate styles available




Not so for MS apps, at least. They will usually say in the font dialogue whether a font is "installed for screen display only" and, if so, "the closest available font will be used for printing". This is MS's way of saying a faux font will be used.

Herb wrote:

A downside of that approach [The MS faux fonts vs. real bold & italic) 
is that there's no way to tell if the font has the alternate styles 
available


To which Dom replied:

Not so for MS apps, at least. They will usually say in the font 
dialogue whether a font is "installed for screen display only" and, if 
so, "the closest available font will be used for printing". This is 
MS's way of saying a faux font will be used.

And Herb adds:

[Comments are based on MS Office 2003]

That message, very small at the bottom of a crowded dialog box, is 
almost NEVER noticed and almost as rarely is it even seen! The dialog 
box itself is seldom used by most people; of course for those people 
who never use it, it probably doesn't matter anyway.

The messages presented there differ between Type 1 and Truetype fonts. 
Both are misleading.

For an installed TrueType font-style, the message reads:
   "This is a True Type font. This font will be used on both printer 
and screen."

For an installed Type 1 or OTF font-style, it reads:
   "This is a scalable printer font. The screen image may not match 
printed output."

MS Office Apps describe Type 1 and .otf fonts as "Printer Fonts", and 
associate a printer-looking icon in font selection drop-down lists.

Selected styles that are NOT available, either TT or T1, yield the 
same message:
   "This font style is imitated for display. The closest matching 
style will be printed."

  - Herb

Regardless of whether most people are aware of or use the font dialogue and accepting that the messages are not particularly clear, for those who want to know it is possible to tell if a faux font is being used by those MS apps.

Some of this dialog stuff is better in Office 2007, btw.

T

That's the first time I've heard anybody outside of MS say anything 
good about office 2007!

There are other things to like, such as PowerPoint *finally* supporting kerning. Of course, it's off by default, but it least it can be turned on.

Then again, I still spend absurd amounts of time trying to figure out how to do basic tasks, after using it for about six months. :(

Cheers,

T

I'm hoping someone can help me locate the an older video driver for my new Dell Vostro 2510 laptop.

Same problems installing type 1 fonts in XP Pro as everyone else.

My understanding is that the video driver for my Invidia GE Force 8400M GS needs to come from Dell. They don't have an updated driver and I'd rather not scrap the laptop, buy a new one, and reinstall everything.

I do see an updated driver on Indivia's site, but I"m afraid of potential hardware conflicts with a non-dell driver.

HELP!!

I received a workaround fix from HP concerning this. Below is their email to me:

--- start of email from HP ---

Good news. Nvidia has identified the problem and provided a fix. The way it was explained to me, Windows expects the device driver to be a certain size (maximum). In this case, the nvidia driver is slightly larger than expected. A simply registry entry will resolve the issue in WinXP (the issue doesn't occur in Vista).

To resolve the problem, do the following:

Open the registry editor (regedit)

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Add a new REG_DWORD entry called SessionImageSize with a value (decimal) of 20

Reboot

The Type 1 fonts should now open/install without any problems.

--- End of HP email ---

I did what was suggested and was I able to install my Type 1 fonts.

Dave

Dave:

THANK YOU! It worked.

I'll be sure and forward the fix to Dell's tech group that was about to have me return my Vostro and upgrade to a workstation class laptop.

Glad to hear it worked for someone else, on a different brand of computer. Hopefully this can work for everyone having the same problem.

This is fascinating news. Thanks for sharing!

T

I have just purchased a Dell Precision 4400. When I tried to install my Type 1 fonts, I kept getting the error message: "the *.PFM file is either invalid or damaged". This is a disaster as we have thousands of files with Helvetica.

Early this morning (Saturday!), I got a call from a terrific Dell tech, Cyndi Fleck. I had sent her the link to this Adobe forum topic. She took over my laptop and did the registry change in #65 (I'm such a chicken about the registry) and the Type 1 fonts loaded like a charm.

Thank you so much Dave Ingraham as I would either have paid an IT expert to TRY and solve this problem, or sent the laptop back assuming it was defective.

Cyndi said she would distribute your solution to other Dell techs so you are likely going to help many others by sharing your knowledge here. I know you saved me a lot of frustration. Thanks.

This is absolutely amazing! You guys have no idea how long this has been a thorn in my side. I could never figure out what my problem was other than it HAD to do with the nVidia drivers. I even formatted my machine a number of times to gain access to my fonts. It was to the point where I was losing all of the fonts required to do my job.

The fix in post #65 worked perfectly! All of my Type 1 fonts install without a problem and everything is working great! This was on an Lenovo (IBM) T61p with the latest Lenovo nVidia driver.

Personally, I have never liked nVidia cards or drivers that much. I greatly despise their drivers. All of my non-work personal computers run ATI cards and the driver set (especially custom drives) are amazing!

I will never purchase an nVidia card unless I have no other choice.

Thank you for this post....I only hope nVidia will get off their butt and create a better driver that doesn't break our systems.

Just to make sure that I give credit where credit's due, the fix was provided to me by a guy in HP tech support named John Camparone. John saw the problem I was having, but nVidia tried to tell him that they didn't. He ended up overnighting a laptop to them to prove that the problem existed. It took a few for them to come up with a fix, but John kept me in the loop the entire time.

I've had issues with HP tech support in the past, but John really went above and beyond with this problem. Thanks John!

yay John!

For what it's worth, I have now provided a lengthy explanation of ALL FOUR of the reasons I know for a complete inability to install any/all OpenType .otf and "PostScript" Type 1 fonts on Windows, in a blog post here:

 <http://www.thomasphinney.com/2008/12/19/no-font-install>

(currently hosted on WordPress.com, but I recommend linking the above permanent URL instead)

Cheers,

T

Just wanted to let everyone know that this fix (#65) also applies to ATI video cards because that just fixed the OTF problem for me as well. Running Windows XP x64 with 8 gigabytes of ram. thanks!

Glad it worked. And thank you for adding additional valuable information!

  - Herb

I'll update my blog post to note that the problem is not specific to Nvidia, thanks!

Side note: 8 GB of RAM? That's gotta be expensive... I was just looking up memory prices for my HP HDX18t laptop. There are two slots, and a 2 GB module is $40 or $50, but a 4 GB module is $340. Ouch. I am reminded of why I decided to get it with 2x2= 4 GB total RAM.

Cheers,

T

Toby: Would you mind (for a very non-technical user) providing a step-by-step instruction on what exactly you did? I have your exact Dell laptop latitude 6500 running Windows XP Professional and same NVidia Quadro NVA 160M.

Thanks!

Alice

Hi, the registry fix #65 also worked for me, XPhome 32bit OS and an ATI Fire GL 5600 pro video card.
Many thanks indeed, saved what could have been a major problem at the start of a PC build, inability to progress any further with the build without fonts !

Whilst here on a thread fcastro may come back to, I shall ask, you mention 64bit XP, wiki says installer for ATM doesnt work on 64bit, what are the steps to resolving this, or what Font manager do you run ?

Envirographics

I have just experienced the same issue on the lenovo T61. Thank you so much for post #65!

      > the registry fix #65




I have nVidia card (8600GTS), though the PC is DIY, and I noticed some odd behaviour with T1 fonts after I updated the driver but didn't connect the two until I read this thread.

I arrived at this thread like lots of others who were trying to install a Type1 font and kept getting the "invalid or corrupt" error, which was clearly false. I know I was installing from an ancient 1993(?) 720KB floppy, but the disk checked OK on every other count.

I amended the registry as per post #63 but it didn't seem to work, but I was able to install the T1 fonts in safe mode.

So a big thank you to all you guys, and I now have some rather old T1 fonts installed and all is well with an old InDesing publication. Diolch yn fawr!

Iechyd da! John
22:36 26/03/2009 GMT