Help with Fonts that have trashed my machine

Is there any way I can restore my fonts on my main account without having to re install snow leopard...

I'm no font guru but Kurt Lang is...
+ http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607630+
+"First, download Pacifist. Insert the first OS installation CD or DVD. Start the utility and click on the "Open Mac OS X Install Packages" button. Keep feeding the application the CDs or DVDs of your Leopard, Tiger or Panther Install disks as it asks for them. If you have a set of DVDs that came with your Mac, the first disk should be the only one you need. After Pacifist has finished reading all of the packages, select the package that has the fonts you want installed and click the Install button on Pacifist's menu. Only that package will be installed to its default location. For a complete set of fonts, reinstall both the /System/Library/Fonts/ and /Library/Fonts/ folders. All fonts you install from Pacifist will overwrite any identical fonts on your hard drive in the default locations, replacing any damaged fonts in the process. If you have copied or moved any of the default fonts to another location, they will still be there and will need to be deleted manually. All in all, this method is much quicker and easier than doing an entire Archive and Install to get your fonts back where they belong."+

As macjack noted, you can reinstall just the fonts from your OS X installation disk without reinstalling the entire OS. But, it sounds like your bigger issue is that at least one (probably more) of the fonts you installed are bad. Applications displaying the wrong fonts is usually caused by one of two things, sometimes both:

1) The fonts have incorrect internal names and are conflicting with the font that is supposed to be displaying.

2) The fonts are damaged. If they are, that in turn damages Font Book's database. Once that happens, you will see incorrect fonts displayed, not being able to activate or deactivate fonts from within Font Book, etc.

So just reinstalling OS X's supplied fonts won't fix the issue by itself. You need to do multiple steps:

1) Move all of the third party fonts you installed somewhere other than in a Fonts folder. You can just delete them too since you have them on disk.

2) Reset Font Book. Restart your Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key when you hear the startup chime to boot into Safe Mode. Keep holding it until OS X asks you to log in (you will get this screen on a Safe Mode boot even if your Mac is set to automatically log in). Let the Mac finish booting to the desktop and then restart normally.

This will reset Font Book's database and clear the cache files in your user account. Any font sets you have created will be gone. Also, all fonts will now be active, regardless of their state beforehand.

3) Close all running applications. From an administrator account, open the Terminal app and enter the following command:

sudo atsutil databases -remove

This removes all font cache files. Both for the system and all user font cache files. After running the command, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.

Everything should be working correctly at this point. The only reason it wouldn't is if the OS X supplied fonts themselves were damaged.

Theres not I dont know about PC's and windows, I moved over to mac a year ago and feel like a real newbie 😟

I know what you mean. I started on an IBM XT clone running DOS 3.1. Went on to build many PCs for myself and family members. Didn't start using Macs until I moved from the dying proprietary Scitex imaging stations, to learning how to do the same work in Photoshop in OS 8. But even then, I just used Macs. Didn't understand how different they were. It wasn't until I started my own home business that I bought my first Mac and really had to learn the system. Doesn't matter how long you've used Windows. You get the basic similarities right away, but enough is different that you scratch your head learning how to tweak and maintain the Mac OS. It would be the same as first learning Linux. Similar, but very different at the same time.

If you want to start bringing some of your purchased fonts back in, create a New Library set in Font Book. That method opens fonts in place rather than copying them to the Fonts folder in your user account. Open about 50 at a time and observe the results. If fonts suddenly go out of whack, one of the fonts you just activated is bad. Deactivate that set and move on to the next until you've tested all 1000 fonts.

In any sets that messed things up, break them down to 10 at a time to narrow down where the bad boys are. Once you locate the troublemaker. Delete it and never attempt to use that font again.

Thanks again guys really appreciated 🙂

You're quite welcome.