Installing Fonts for Vista

Documentation from: http://freebarcodefonts.dobsonsw.com/installing-free-barcode-fonts.html

It can be quite a trick to install fonts on Windows machines. There are a few rules, though, that can allow an installer to install the free barcode fonts on both XP and Vista.

1) User MUST have administrator access to install. Most install applications allow you to specify this as a requirement.

2) The fonts should be installed in the Windows volume font folder, but this is NOT a requirement. The fonts can, in fact, be installed anywhere but the font folder is the preferred area for storage.

This will get you through an XP install, but it's not going to help you with Vista. In fact, Vista makes it difficult but it can be done reliably if you manually write the font into the registry. If you dont write the font into the registry Vista will not find it on it's own, no matter what you do.

The proper registry key for fonts is “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts” You need to set the subkey to the font name and the subkey value to the path to the font. Any font stored in the fonts folder is considered local.

For instance, If I were setting the value for a code128bwin.ttf font in the fonts folder, I would set the key to “Code128BWin” and the value to “code128bwin.ttf.” However, if the font were stored at c:\somefolder I would set the key to “Code128BWin” and the value to “c:\somefolder\code128bwin.ttf.”

In any event, you should ensure the user is forced to restart before expecting the font to be available.