If you accidentally deleted or replaced some system fonts in Windows, you can restore the default fonts and their settings to their original state. Missing or corrupted fonts can cause strange or unreadable symbols, hieroglyphs, or squares to appear in Windows app dialogs instead of normal characters. In this post, we’ll cover how to restore the default system fonts to a clean state in Windows 11 or Windows 10
Font display problems in Windows can be caused by:
- Uninstalling a third-party app that inadvertently removes system font files during the uninstallation process (up to complete cleaning of the font files folder
C:\Windows\Fonts). - A third-party program that, when installed, replaced one of the standard fonts or overrode the font settings in the registry.
How to Restore Default System Font Settings in Windows
Try the built-in option for restoring standard fonts first. This option is found in the classic Control Panel in Windows 10/8.1.
- Go to the Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization -> Fonts. To quickly navigate this Control Panel item, run the following command:
control fonts - Select Font settings in the left pane;
- In the next window click the Restore default font settings button
- Restart a computer.
This option removes all third-party fonts, leaving only the standard Windows fonts. However, the Font Reset feature will not help if the file of the specific font (*.fon, *.otf, or *.ttf) has been deleted or replaced.
Apply the following REG file to set the SegouUI font family as the default for Windows system dialog elements (Win11_Segoe_UI_font_set_default.zip).
To restore the font, you can copy the corresponding font file from the Windows distribution (or from another computer), or download and install the font file manually or through the GPO. Note that Windows has a feature that can block the installation of third-party fonts, which may prevent new fonts from being installed (check the Untrusted Font Blocking GPO option under Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Mitigation Options).
Extract the Default Font Files from a Windows Installation Image
The font files in Windows are stored in the C:\Windows\fonts directory. Try to open this folder in File Explorer. If you only see a few font files with the *.FON and *.TTF extensions in this directory, then the default font files have been deleted. Resetting them with the built-in tools (as described above) won’t help.
%Windir%\Fonts), Windows 11 users can also install fonts in their profiles. Fonts from a user profile are available only to the current user. Before resetting system fonts, we recommend removing custom fonts from the profile folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts).
The missing font files can be copied from any computer running the same OS version or extracted from the installation disk or an ISO/WIM image of Windows.
Let’s consider the second case. To do this, you will need an installation image with the same version of Windows that is installed on your computer. The easiest way to create a Windows installation ISO image is with the Media Creation Tool. Mount the ISO image to a virtual drive (suppose the drive letter H: has been assigned to it).
Open the PowerShell command prompt as an administrator and copy the H:\sources\install.wim or H:\sources\install.esd file into the C:\Distr\ directory:
Copy-Item H:\sources\install.wim C:\Distr\
dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:c:\distr\install.esd /SourceIndex:1 /DestinationImageFile: c:\distr\install.wim /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity
Mount the Windows installation image file (install.wim) to the C:\Distr\wim directory:
dism /mount-wim /wimfile:c:\Distr\install.wim /index:1 /mountdir:C:\Distr\wim
Dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:C:\Distr\install.wim
Copy the original font files from the C:\Distr\wim\Windows\Fonts to the C:\Windows\Fonts directory, replacing the files in the target directory.
Copy-Item -path C:\Distr\wim\Windows\Fonts -Destination C:\Windows -recurse –container -force
The font files will be replaced with the original ones. Some system fonts that are currently in use won’t be replaced (this will be indicated by errors in the console).
Now you can unmount the source WIM image:
dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:C:\Distr\wim /discard
Restart your computer and check if the font problem persists.
Reset Font Cache in Windows
In Windows, font caching is enabled by default (similar to the icon caching). This allows loading fonts faster in Windows apps and dialogs. The font cache is located in the %WinDir%\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache folder. A corrupted font cache can also cause font display issues in Windows. We recommend manually resetting the Windows font cache.
- Open the service management console (
services.msc); - Stop the Windows Font Cache Service using the Services console GUI or using PowerShell:
Get-Service FontCache|Stop-Service –force
- Clean up the font cache folder:
Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache -File | foreach { $_.Delete()} - Delete the file FNTCACHE.DAT:
Remove-Item c:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT
- Run the FontCache service and then reboot your device.
This will rebuild the font cache.
Download and Restore Default Fonts on Windows 11 and 10
Suppose you don’t have a Windows installation image. In that case, you can copy the directory containing the original font files from another computer running the same OS version, or use ready font archives that can be downloaded from the links below:
- Default fonts for Windows 8 – DefaultFontsWin8.zip (197 MB);
- Default fonts for Windows 8.1 – DefaultFontsWin8-1.zip (258 MB);
- Original fonts for Windows 10 22H2 (suitable for other Windows 10 builds) — DefaultFonts-Win10-21H1.zip (189 MB);
- Original fonts for Windows 11 – DefaultFonts-Win11.zip (190 MB).
Download and unzip the archive for your Windows version. Copy the archive contents to the C:\Windows\Fontsfolder with the replacement.
Then download and apply registry files with default font settings for your version of Windows:
- Windows 10 — win10-default-fonts-reg.zip
- Windows 11 — win11-default-fonts-reg.zip
Each archive contains three REG files:
- win_10_fonts.reg – contains a list of default system fonts registered in the registry (
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts); - win_10_FontSubstitutes.reg – contains font association settings (
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes); - win_restore_default_user_font_settings.reg –restore default font settings in the user registry hive (
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Font Management).
Extract the archive and double-click each REG file to apply changes to the registry.
Restart your computer. The problem with the fonts should be fixed!
If you’re still having problems with fonts not displaying correctly, run the following commands to check and repair your Windows image:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
sfc /scannow
19 comments
There is no Control Panel any more!
The Control Panel IS still there
go to Start, All Apps, Windows System, Control Panel.
Right Click it and pin it to your Start Menu, for ease of access.
I’m having difficulty copying the “Fonts” folder to my system installation drive..
I extracted the “esd” file and converted it to a “wim” file, mounted it to the “C:\Distr\wim” folder with no issues, but when I try copy the “Fonts” folder to “C:\Windows” I get the following message for every file:
Copy-Item : Access to the path ‘C:\Windows\Fonts\8514fix.fon’ is denied.
At line:1 char:1
+ Copy-Item -path C:\Distr\wim\Windows\Fonts -Destination C:\Windows -r …
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : PermissionDenied: (8514fix.fon:FileInfo) [Copy-Item], UnauthorizedAccessException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CopyFileInfoItemUnauthorizedAccessError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.CopyItemCommand
I’m running PowerShell as administrator, so I don’t understand why it’s complaining about access permissions here?
However, I actually came right by simply navigated to the “wim” folder that I mounted the “install.wim” image to, selected all the fonts in “C:\Distr\wim\Windows\Fonts\” and selected “Install” from the context menu.
Perhaps you should update that step in the guide to list this as an alternative if that PS command fails?
Had corrupted fonts in certain places. Like someone else I was getting “UnauthorizedAccessException” during the Copy-Item command for all of the fonts. Problem wasn’t fixed. But right clicking on the fonts and pressing “install” fixed it for me.
Some of the font files can be used right now, and you can replace them in the Safe Mode or with the LiveCD.
Very good text ! Thank you !
I have searched this information and these downloads, you helped me !
a square is showing in my time instead of colon, this happened after i changed my font
plz help me to fix this
Hi Bandana, did you ever get this resolved? I too have the same issue now.
Thanks, this helps me a lot !
Great guide!! This is the first guide that has actually worked to solve a problem for me in ages! Wow, thanks. Stupid squares are goneeee.
I got to a point and this did not work for me, but i found an alternative method that did work. Using 7zip, I extracted the fonts from the wim file and dropped them into my fonts folder. It was much simpler.
Thanks alot to you 🤍 It really worked
Thank you very much! I was having a problem with fonts for a very long time. Most of the programs were working fine but for some reason in the Beckhoff TwinCAT 2 PLC Control program the font was unreadable. After competing the Download and Restore Default Fonts on Windows 10 guide the font in that program became readable. Again thanks a lot!
Sadly this did not work for me. I’ve been having issues with some website, some emails on Gmail and Epic Games Store, all show these weird symbols instead of text. And they started to have these problems right after went from Win10 to Win11 last summer (clean install thou). So something is definitely broken within Win11 itself so that some programs can’t get specific fonts loaded up.
Thanks, this solved my problem of missing fonts (accidentally deleted) by extracting from ISO file and reinstalling.
This is a working method. Thanks for your help and support.
Thanks for providing this useful information and associated files. They simplified restoring Windows fonts.
These steps were easy to follow and most importantly worked!