Well, *I've* never seen that happen without intervention from some
third-party app (and I'm not sure I've even seen it then.) But stranger
things have been known to happen.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User
http://www.grystmill.com/articles/cleanboot.htm
http://www.grystmill.com/articles/security.htm

"Tuttle" wrote in message
...
"Gary S. Terhune" wrote in message
...
"Tuttle" wrote in message
...
Greetings. After a disaster, I have done a format and clean
install of
Win98SE plus all Critical Updates. Prior to the disaster, I made a
backup of my Fonts directory

drag the font files out of that backed-up Fonts folder, and then
use
File | Install New Fonts command to install each of the fonts
from
the backup?

Unless you have a font manager, you have to reinstall the fonts
manually, just the way you describe in the latter half of that
paragraph. Fonts aren't installed by virtue of being in the Fonts
folder. There are Registry entries that get created during
installation.

I thought I should post what I found, for benefit of anyone in future
searching for similar info.

As I said, I had made a backup of the entire Fonts directory from my
Win98SE
system. I had simply dragged/copied that entire folder to an external
USB
drive.

Today, following Gary's advice, I opened the old Fonts folder from the
external drive so I could view its contents. I left that window open.
Then
on my newly-installed system I went to Control Panel | Fonts and
opened it,
in order to use the Install New Fonts command to install the fonts
from the
backup. Surprise, surprise: all the fonts from the backup were present
in
the system's Fonts folder. Bizarre. I even tried using them from
within MS
Word, and they work.

Here's my theory: because I had copied/backed-up the entire Fonts
folder,
including the folder, somehow Windows knows that that is a special
system
folder. In fact when I opened the old Fonts folder from the external
drive,
its File menu also had the Install New Fonts command. So maybe because
I
didn't just copy the fonts files, but copied the entire folder,
Windows
automatically loads all those fonts onto the new system. Weird, but
saved me
a lot of work.

I tested my theory about Windows having some "link" between the old
copied
Fonts folder on the external drive, and the "real" Fonts folder on the
new
system. I installed a new font onto the new system. I then opened the
old
Fonts folder from the external drive, and magically that new font is
now
there as well.

Strange stuff, but sure helped me out. Any comments on my theory?