Vista - Fonts - Change Default

Deanooo,

The default font in Vista is Segoe UI 9 pt. What program or item has Times New Roman as the default?

I had to reinstall Vista again after a hard drive failure, and realised i never got round to posting the solution to the prompt box issue lol.

It consists of a few registry changes, but now i've figured it out, it only takes about 5 minutes at most. (That is in addition to doing the changes listed in the guide earlier in this thread).

Open regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

Once inside that key, youll need to edit the following entries:

Segoe UI (TrueType)
Segoe UI Bold (TrueType)
Segoe UI Bold Italic (TrueType)
Segoe UI Italic (TrueType)

They will by default contain segoeui.ttf/segoeuib.ttf/segoeuiz.ttf/segoeuii.ttf, you'll need to change the value to the ttf file for the font you want to use, and it will point it to that font, in my case i pointed it to verdana.ttf/verdanab.ttf/verdanaz.ttf/verdanai.ttf.

If you are running 64 bit Vista, you'll need to repeat the process in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts.

Now sadly, Vista is a little too smart for that to work on it's own. Essentially it looks for Segoe UI as the font for prompt boxes / taskbar / clock etc, and when that isn't available it switches to the next available, which is Segoe UI Italic, then bold etc. Once all Segoe UI variations are pointed at your chosen font, Vista will default to using System as the font for those items.

This is the part it took me a little while to suss out, basically you have to create a font subsitute set of keys, so that when Segoe UI is unavailable it will switch to your desired font. For this you need to navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

Create 4 new String Values, titled:
Segoe UI
Segoe UI Bold
Segoe UI Bold Italic
Segoe UI Italic

Set the value for each of these keys to your desired font, in my case it was setup as below:

Segoe UI = Verdana
Segoe UI Bold = Verdana Bold
Segoe UI Bold Italic = Verdana Bold Italic
Segoe UI Italic = Verdana Italic

Now if you log off / log back on, you should see that all the instances that still had Segoe UI as the font, will now have changed to Verdana (or whatever font you chose).

The only thing you have to bear in mind, is you need to choose a replacement font that has the same number of variations as Segoe UI does. Originally i wanted to use Tahoma, but that doesn't have an Italic / Italic Bold variation, so i went for Verdana instead.

Hope this helps anyone still struggling with the crazy Vista fonts.

Hello everyone, can anyone please tell me how to change the desktop fonts. Im already done with the changing of the font color. Is there a wayto change desktop fonts. help please

Im new here forgive me if Im posting questions on the wrong thread

Hello Ben,

Step 4 in the tutorial below can help show you how to change the default desktop icons.

Desktop Icons

Hope this helps,
Shawn

This is what it looks like when I get to step 5, instead of the picture you show Shawn. I don't know why mine is diffrent, or what to do.






Sorry, couldn't get the image to work so I put a link up.

Hello Brigade, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Not sure if this is what you mean, but you would need to click on the small triangles to the left of the folders (keys) in the left pane to expand them to get to the path at step 5.

Hope this helps,
Shawn