How can I delete fonts from my code, under Windows?

Question

This article showed me how to install fonts from a script, but now I'm faced with the problem of removing them. How can I do that ? Any language is ok, I'll convert the info to what I need later.

EDIT: Okay, so I now know how to uninstall fonts ( most of the part at least ). I'm issuing calls to RemoveFontResource. After that I use SendMessage with parameters: 0xffff,0x001D,0,0 ( HWND_BROACAST,WM_FONTCHANGE ... and I forgot what the other two parameters stand for ). The thing is, this deletes the font, but in the Control Panel's Fonts entry, the font still appears there ( even though if you try to delete it from there as well, it will say it cannot read from source file or disk.

So basically, I'm deleting a font in this order:

• deleting physically from the C:\Windows\Fonts
• calling RemoveFontResource
• calling SendMessage

What's the proper way of uninstalling?

Answer 1

All your fonts can be found at C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\

Explorer will mask this folder to display the font names instead of the real file names, but its all there. You can edit and comment out the lines of C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\desktop.ini to disable this feature and reveal the font files (maybe you need to reopen the Explorer to take effect).

Answer 2

Once you find the actual filename as Havenard mentioned and using the article you mentioned you can do a

objFSO.DeleteFile(FontFilePath);

where FontFilePath is the file path of the file you want to delete.

More Info here: technet article

A problem that you may run into, which I didn't think of until I saw your comment, is that a program may require that font for some particular item. All known system fonts are stored within the registry. If you remove a font, you should also remove the key from the registry. Registry paths are as follows

Windows 95
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Fonts]

Windows NT
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]

The keys are as followed:

Key name = Full name of the font
Key type = REG_SZ
Key Value = name of font file

Answer 3

I account the same question, this is my code below:

RemoveFontResource(fontPath);               
DeleteFile(fontPath);
::SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, WM_FONTCHANGE, 0, 0);

But the problem is the font still exist in the 'Fonts' folder, after i deleted the font file. Could anyone help me to solve this situation? Thanks!

Answer 4

From all the documentation I've ever seen those three lines of code are the "proper" way to do it but as we well know it doesn't quite work - as expected.

RemoveFontResource(fontPath);               
DeleteFile(fontPath);
::SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, WM_FONTCHANGE, 0, 0);

REBOOT

I executed the code above and duplicated your problem (control panel still shows the font, however the font file is gone). I then rebooted. Now the font is gone from the Fonts Control Panel applet.

Something else to note: even though control panel still showed the font as "there" applications no longer listed it in their font lists (I specifically tried Wordpad, before and after deleting webdings.ttf - without rebooting)

Yea i know - rebooting is a poor solution - especially if you need to update the Font since you can't reinstall it (via the control panel anyways - it claims the font is still installed) until you reboot after removing it (I tried).

However if all you want to do is remove the font - its not the worst solution - the font is essentially gone after you uninstall it (apps don't see it, its only visible in control panel fonts as far as i can tell) and you wouldn't need to force a reboot.

From the SDK help on RemoveFontResourceFont (which may indicate why the oddness is seen)

If there are outstanding references to a font, the associated resource remains loaded until no device context is using it.