"Bad Font Detected" Errors

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Level 2

289 points

"Bad Font Detected" Errors

I've been getting a lot of "Bad font detected" errors popping up in the Finder. It always seems to be a different font. Just today it happened to a font that was used in a Word doc. The error came up and the text in the Word doc was garbage. It happens mainly in Suitcase Fusion though, since that is where I access most of my fonts, so it sparks more errors. I have spoken to support at Extensis and they agree its the Finder, not the Fusion app or the fonts themselves. I would have thought it's a bad font, but the only thing is, when I restart, the problem always disappears.

And once the error happens, it seems to happen more frequently until I restart and things calm down for a while again.

It happens randomly to a different font every time and its driving me crazy.

Any help?

Mac Pro (2x3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon), MacBook Pro (2.8 GHz/Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jul 10, 2009 10:59 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Jul 10, 2009 12:33 PM in response to Frozo

Sometimes these are caused by a corrupted cache file. Download a utility such as TinkerTool System - VersionTracker or MacUpdate - and use it to clear all user, system, and font caches.

I would also suggest doing the following:

Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally. Open Disk Utility, select your startup volume in the left side list, click on the First Aid tab in the DU main window, then click on the Repair Permissions button.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

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