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I have 3 font files on my desktop that I placed there temporarily to do some testing with them. I installed them "temporarily" using Suitcase Fusion.

Since then I am not able to delete those fonts from my computer. Suitcase Fusion shows that they are not activated and I have no programs open (after a fresh restart), yet I can't delete those files.

In the Control Panel → Fonts window, these fonts are shown with a shortcut arrow symbol on them (what does that mean?). I used Nirsoft's "Open Files Viewer" to see if they were open and they are shown to be open, and the process is shown as "System process"

I also tried to delete them from the Control Panel. It asks to confirm the deletion, so I confirm, but it doesn't actually delete.

What can I do to delete these font files? I'm using Windows 10 Pro 64 bit.

Worthwelle
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DaveyD
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6 Answers6

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This Registry key manages fonts that the system knows about:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

I discovered in an older answer that removing a value of that key or changing a value's data to point to a nonexistent file will make Windows not see the font as usable.

Therefore, if you remove the Registry entries that correspond to the fonts you want to torch (and then restart to make the system reload everything), you should be able to delete the fonts' files.

Community
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Ben N
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  • Great! After deleting those keys from the registry and a restart, I was able to delete those font files. Thanks! – DaveyD May 11 '16 at 03:37
  • PS> Get-ItemProperty -Path "Registry::\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" – joharr Jun 25 '18 at 06:29
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    I have the same problem. There is no entry for the front in the registry. I used admin-cmd-prompt to attempt to: own (success), delete (fail). Manual delete via Admin file explorer. File move to desktop (success) followed by delete via APM[All Previous Methods listed] (fail). Renamed file (success) followed by APM. I tried cmd prompt and all the modifiers for del /S /Q , etc. I "unlocked 'secret admin' in cmd prompt via net user administrator /active:yes , upon restart and changing to that new user I successfully deleted 1 of the 2 .ttf's -- Got any more ideas? – Xzila Jan 05 '20 at 14:58
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If the above does not work on Windows 10, you can also STOP and DISABLE the following two services:

  1. Windows Font Cache Service
  2. Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache 3.0.0.0

Reboot your computer, delete the font files, and re-enable the services by setting the Startup Type back to 'Manual'.

Stephen Rauch
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Hans Erlang
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    Formal note: in general you shouldn't refer to another answer as "the above". This is not a forum and there's no single answer that will always be directly above yours. Any user can sort answers by votes, time, activity. If your answer gets accepted (OP can change the accepted answer anytime) then it will be the top answer; if the third answer appears and gets upvoted more than your answer then it may be "the above". It would be better to say e.g. "Ben N's answer", because hardly ever a single user posts two answers to the question. Giving the link to the answer you refer to is the safest. – Kamil Maciorowski Jun 18 '17 at 22:03
  • I stopped both services, then ran command prompt as admin and removed the ttf files i did not want. – Robot70 Mar 16 '18 at 18:15
  • Worked for me. Thanks! – Artur Michajluk Jun 12 '20 at 12:50
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I had some fonts that were installed in my local app data folder %localappdata%/Microsoft/Windows/Fonts/. In order to delete them I had to delete the corresponding registry values in HKEY_CURRENT_USER:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

I then had to sign out and in again before I could delete the fonts in File Explorer

binaryfunt
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  • You don't have to sign out if you kill the app that uses the font. https://superuser.com/a/73258/99602 After I have closed the app, I then got "is used by System" error, and killing explorer did the job. – Qwerty Jul 02 '20 at 11:05
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Another way to delete a font file on Windows:

  1. Change the font filename (and extension).
  2. Log out of Windows.
  3. Log in again.
  4. Delete the font file.
Abdulrahman Bres
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  • If OP can't delete the file because it is open, it generally can't be renamed for the same reason. – Worthwelle Nov 08 '19 at 16:20
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    This is the only answer that worked for me. The font was not even in the registry but Windows still complained it was in use... – starmandeluxe May 22 '22 at 12:10
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One possible simple fix: Turn off the Preview Pane in Windows Explorer. I found that if I have the preview pane open, I get an error message "The action can't be completed because the file is open in System" when I try to delete a font file. When I close the preview pane I can freely delete the font file.

John Horak
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The way that I deleted a problematic font was:

  1. Go to Settings -> Personalization -> Fonts
    • Find your font and select it
    • Try uninstalling. Get the message "Font cannot be deleted because it's in use."
    • Under the Metadata section locate the "font file" field value (the path that your font file has). E.g., C:\WINDOWS\FONTS\BELL.TTF
  2. Open Resource Monitor by searching it in Start menu (Windows tool)
    • Open CPU tab
    • Paste only the file name (e.g., bell.ttf for my example) into the Associated Handles textfield. It will give you all the processes that use the font file.
    • End the given processes through the Task Manager. (NB! Make sure that ending those processes will not break your system!). It is wiser to do a restart before you do it, so that no system processes are using the font file yet.
    • After ending the processes, to make sure that nothing is using the file, try searching for it again in the Associated Handles search. If no processes are given after the search is completed - you're good to go!
  3. Now go back to Fonts section in Settings as you did in the first step and try uninstalling the font again.

Worked for me :P

Cheers!

Richango
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