Crashed OSX due to too many fonts

Posted by tony on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

It’s simple really, i installed 14,000 fonts using fontbook last night. So, each time the computer tried to launch an app (like word or excel), it tried to lead them each into memory, which meant those programs just never launched.

Oh, and when I tried to reboot, forget it. To log in, I waited more than 30 minutes after the hard reset, never saw my desktop.

The solution is simple.

1. Reboot the mac while holding the SHIFT key — this brings up in ‘safe mode’, I’m guessing that’s just runlevel 2 or something.

2. Open finder — all those fonts were installed by me, so they went straight into my  ~afraser/Library/Fonts directory.

Blast them, restart, presto. Oh, and then go get something like Font Suitcase to ‘activate’ and ‘deactivate’ fonts so you never do that again.

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