Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Removing Extra Fonts for Speed

Windows 7 has more than 130 different fonts and variations that it loads for use when the system boots up. Of these 130 plus fonts, only a handful are used on a regular basis. Every single font that Windows loads increases the amount of time the operating system takes to boot. If you are like me and have installed one of those font CDs that add hundreds of additional fonts to your system, you will notice that your computer does not boot up as fast as it once did. Simply put, systems with a lot of fonts will take more time to load because the system has to load and index each font. Thankfully, there is a very simple answer to this: just remove the fonts that you do not use from your font directory.

You can go about removing the unneeded fonts from your font directory in a number of different ways. The best way is to move the unused fonts to a separate folder on your system so that in the event that you ever want to use one of those extra fonts again, you just have to copy it back to the Fonts folder.

Caution When you remove fonts from your computer, you will no longer be able to use them in any software application, including Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and Excel.

Before you start removing fonts, take at look at Table below. These fonts are commonly used, for reasons that the table explains. Be careful not to remove any fonts on which the system normally depends.

Commonly Used Windows Fonts

Font Name	Reason
Segoe	The variations of this font can be found in elements of the Windows interface.
Calibri	Common font used in Office 2007 applications and documents.
Verdana	This font is often used on web pages and applications
Arial	Another common web page font, and used in applications.
Trebuchet	Common application font and used in some web pages back in XP days. Some older applications may still require it.
Tahoma	Common Windows font that you may want to hold on to for application and web page compatibility.
Times New Roman	The default font for web pages and word processing applications such as Microsoft Word.
MS Sans Serif	Default font for Visual Studio applications that is now required for a lot of legacy and newer applications.

Now that you know which fonts you should not remove, you also need to be aware of one more thing before starting your adventure in the Fonts folder. Inside the Fonts folder are several fonts with similar names. The fonts are broken up not only by font name but also by the type style. For example, there is an Arial Bold, Arial Bold Italic, Arial Italic, and so on. When sorting through the fonts to delete, you also can choose to delete only specific types of fonts.

Deleting fonts is fairly easy, but removing the fonts is a little trickier because the Fonts folder is not like a normal folder. To remove the fonts, you need to start off by creating a folder to put the old fonts in:

1. Click the Start button and select Computer. Navigate to the Local Disk (C:) or where you have installed Windows.
2. Navigate to the Windows folder and create a folder to store the fonts that you are going to remove from the Fonts folder. Right-click the whitespace that lists the folder and files, select New, and then select Folder. Call your folder Fonts Backup or some other name so that you can identify it as the place that your old fonts are.
3. After you have created the new folder, open it.
4. Without closing the new folder you just opened, click the Start button again and select Computer. Navigate to the Local Disk (C:) drive again and to the Windows folder, and then to the Fonts folder.
5. Now that you have both the Fonts folder open and your backup folder open, arrange the two windows on your screen.
6. Now that the two font folders are side by side, drag the fonts you want to back up to your backup folder.
7. After you have backed up the fonts you want to delete, right-click the font files in the Fonts folder and select Delete.

In the event that you want to reinstall a font, all you have to do is drag the font file from the backup folder back to the Fonts folder. An Installation dialog box will flash just for a second as it adds the font back to the library. After you drag the file back to the Fonts folder, the file will still remain in the backup directory because it just copies it there. After you have confirmed that it was actually installed again, feel free to delete the font file from the backup folder.