Hi there: this happens to me most times Windows updates to a new version—I wind up with a new set of fonts.
For reasons which I won’t go into here, I dislike Arial, and in the old days of Windows 7, and even the last Windows 10 I had (version 1909?) I managed to get rid of it, and put something else in its place (namely a font I already had a licence for, but edited and renamed Arial).
However, on 2004, this has proved impossible. So far I have tried these methods to remove references to it or delete it:
- Go into registry and delete the key (the method described at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/deleting-protected-system-fonts/141fc4b8-34fb-4ef3-aaa3-51fce725235c)
- Go into registry and have key point to a new font with the same name
- Go into the fontsubstitutes key and have Arial point to Helvetica
- Do the same but in the 64-bit section in the registry key
- Use elevated command prompt and delete
- Go into safe mode and do the above
- Take ownership of relevant font files through elevated power shell, then delete
- Go into safe mode and do the above
- Delete FNTCACHE.DAT from system32 directory
- Delete ~fontcache files from Local
None have in fact worked.
Windows’ own font viewer says it has worked; Nexusfont shows the replacement. However, neither is correct. When you go into individual programs (including Edge and Vivaldi), there’s the original Arial (arial.ttf) in all its splendour on pages that specify it (e.g. Google results).
So just what is loading c:\windows\fonts\arial.ttf? And is there another way (probably via safe mode, which is how I did it in 1909) to change its attributes to make it “deleteable”?