Installing a large number of fonts can lead to a sluggish computer and/or program crashes. In such a scenario, it might be a good idea to remove all of the third party fonts that were installed in one clean wipe to restore the fonts to their default settings in Windows 8.
Microsoft has added an option to delete all custom added fonts in Windows, however, there’s no restore function available to automatically restore deleted Windows fonts. That’s a task which requires some manual work.
In this post I have provided solutions for both issues:
- Delete all custom installed fonts to restore Windows to default state.
- Restore deleted Windows fonts.
Delete All Custom Installed Fonts and Keep Only the Default Ones
This solution is useful when you have installed a large number of fonts, for instance a font pack. After executing below steps only the default fonts will be left on your PC. So, here are steps to delete all custom installed fonts:
- Open Control Panel and go to Fonts.
- In the left pane, click Font settings.
- Click Restore default font settings.
- Restart Computer.
That’s it! On restart you’ll get a faster, cleaner, and stable Windows 8.
Though, the above setting will not be of any help if you’ve already deleted fonts supplied with Windows 8. For such cases, here’s the solution:
Restore Deleted Windows Fonts
There are two to ways to restore or re-install default Windows 8 fonts:
Install Fonts from another Computer:
The is the easiest one: Copy the Fonts folder from another Windows 8 running computer onto your flash drive. Then go back to your PC and paste all the fonts from the flash drive into your Fonts folder. All missing fonts will be installed in a jiffy.
Install fonts from Windows Setup file:
The second method is a little lengthy, and it will work only if you have the Windows 8 setup at hand. Here’s how to do it:
- First up, you should have the Windows 8 ISO, DVD, or the setup files extracted on your computer. If it’s the ISO or DVD, mount it.
- Next, download GImageX. GImageX is a portable GUI software for the ImageX tool from the Windows Automated Installation Kit. We’ll use it for extracting fonts from the setup.
- After downloading, run gimagex.exe, switch to Mount tab.
- In the tab, select a folder on your computer which you want to use as a mount point. This is the place where you’ll access the font files.
- For source, browse to the Windows setup folder > Sources folder > install.wim. Then click on Mount. It will take a little while for the application to open the WIM file and mount it.
- When you get the success message, go to the folder you chose as the mount point. Inside it, browse to Windows > Fonts. And there you have it, all the fonts supplied with Windows 8.
- Now copy all fonts, go to C:\Windows\Fonts and paste them.
- That’s it. All your fonts are restored.
When you’re done, click on Unmount button in GImageX to free Windows 8 setup and delete any left over files.
Hope this helped.