Cannot re-install default windows fonts from CD.

You can reinstall all the fonts that come with XP using your XP installation CD, but the process of installing fonts is NOT copy/paste.  

Most of the files on your XP installation CD are compressed (to save space) and have to be expanded to some folder on your HDD first, then you can do something with the resulting files.

Fonts need to be "installed" - not copy/pasted and there is a mechanism built in to do that.

What is the KB number of this MS article that you read to tell you how to install the fonts?  I would like to read it to see what you tried to do.

How did you discover that your system has too many fonts to function properly?

What is the name of this font package you tried to install?  I want to read about that too.

My XP SP3 CD has 304 compressed font files (the XP default fonts) on it, so to install them into my XP installation I would:

Expand all the font files from the CD to some temporary folder on my HDD

Delete from my HDD any suspicous fonts or those that need to be reinstalled (or just delete them all to start over)

Install the original XP fonts properly (which is not a copy/paste operation).  I think I said that already.

First you should address any stability issues, so describe your system stability or lack thereof and let's fix that first.

My system has been extremely efficient and stable up until I installed the fonts.

The Font Package I installed was called "65,000 of the best fonts" (A friend gave it to me on a cd he burned)

I ran windows live one care and have a clean bill of health.

This is what the article told me to do, since I cannot find the exact one, I have simply pasted what I remeber here:

B. Manual WAY
With this step, you can choose what default Windows XP fonts you want to restore back to your system one by one or just all.

Open Command Prompt and go to the i386 folder of your Windows XP CD-ROM. Using the “expand -r” command, copy all the missing .tt_ and .fo_ files to Windows folder.

EXAMPLES:

for .FON font files
expand I:\i386\Sserife.fo_ C:\Windows\Fonts\Sserife.fon

for “.TTF” font files:
expand I:\i386\Arial.tt_ C:\Windows\Fonts\Arial.ttf

You said your system was efficient and stable up until you installed the fonts, so has stability returned to your system?

That is indeed a lot of fonts and you said that you discovered you had too many fonts for your system to function properly - how did you arrive at that conclusion (I don't know if there is a limit - but I am curious to know).

I would not put much faith in Windows Live One Care for checking the health of your system.  A more accurate statement might be - Microsoft Live One Care did not detect any problems on my system".

Microsoft is not in the business of detecting and removing malicious software, their malicious scanning tools (use to at least) only care about a small set of files that Microsoft thinks are important, updated their definitions infrequently (used to be only once a month) and still often misses even the simplest of infections - detecting and removing malware is not their area of expertise.  Maybe things are better nowadays, but you might consider expanding your malicious software detection horizons to use some products where that is all they do.

If your friend got the 65000 fonts from any of the Google search results I found using a Torrent Download to get them, that is a very good place to pick up infections, so I am not even going to try to download anything from those sites!  Those posts also contain many warnings but maybe that is not where your friend got the 65000 font package.   Anyway...

Your example of how to install the fonts demonstrate how to do one font at a time and typing those commands works for me here if I expand from my CD (which is not my I drive like the example).  This is not actually "installing" fonts, it is replacing the files on your system that may be missing or corrupted.  That is not how fonts are generally installed, but maybe it is what you want to do.

Did you try those example commands and what part did not work?

Is it your desire to just "start over" with the 304 default XP fonts? 

To answer the other part of your question:

"'E:\' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."

So I guess your system is stable.  Usually, there are only a few hundred fonts in the system, but adding tens of thousands more (i read) will slow your system down so much, you may want to get a free font manager instead of burdening XP with the task of trying to manage them.  

That would be using the XP product in ways for which it was not designed so you may end up with undesirable results.

Hmmm, I'll show you what works on my machine and you will have to adjust the drive letters accordingly.

I would just try to get ONE font replaced (get at least that part working) and then do the rest.

My boot drive is my C drive.

My CD drive is my D drive and I have my XP installation CD in.

From the command prompt, I typed in:

expand d:\i386\Sserife.fo_   c:\windows\fonts\Sserife.fon

The resulting messages were:

Microsoft (R) File Expansion Utility  Version 5.1.2600.0

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1990-1999.  All rights reserved.

Expanding d:\i386\sserife.fo_ to c:\windows\fonts\sserife.fon.

d:\i386\sserife.fo_: 14686 bytes expanded to 64656 bytes, 340% increase.

Think of it like this...  

You have a c:\windows\fonts folder with fonts in it.

Each XP font is in a compressed file on your XP installation CD.

Compressed files on the XP installation CD look similar to uncompressed files except for the underscore_ character on the end.

You must enter the commands exactly right to expand the compressed font file from the CD to an uncompressed font file on your HDD.

When you get done, the compressed sserife.fo_ file needs to be expanded to sserife.fon

Can you just get one font to work?