Phantom Fonts and Parallels 4

[LynseyO]

We are experiencing a very frustrating issue with Parallels Desktop for Mac 4.0. It seems when version 4.0 installs it seems to install some phantom fonts into Windows including among others "Albertus," "Helvetica," "Harrington," "Mona Lisa Recut," and "Zapf- Dingbats" and "Chancery". These fonts are not really there. They do not appear in the Windows XP fonts folder, but they do appear in the font menus of Windows applications. If you try to select one of those fonts and try to use it, they don't work. Windows displays Arial, Times New Roman, or Windings instead which is normal behavior in WIndows if the OS can't find the fonts to use.

I went crazy trying to figure out where these phantom fonts came from and I finally figured out that it was the Parallels installer (or the tools) that seems to be installing these phantom fonts. I checked many Parallels installs at different locations and the the version 4 installs have these phantom fonts. I installed Parallels 4 as a brand new copy on one of our computers and found that on the first boot after install, without ANY further installs or setup, the phantom fonts appear in the menus.

Further, I installed Parallels 4 and Windows XP on another computer without ANY other software besides the basic Mac OS (fresh install) and the phantom fonts were there on first boot up. As a test, I installed a demo of VM Ware Fusion 3.0 and installed Windows XP using the SAME disc that I used with Parallels and the phantom fonts are not there. Only the fonts installed in Windows appear. Lastly, I installed Windows XP using the SAME disc in a Bootcamp partition that Parallels has no control over and the phantom fonts do not appear there either. So it seems that Parallels seems to half install some phantom fonts.

What is going on here? Why are these Phantom fonts installed? Am I missing something? How can I remove them? We don't want them and they actually get in the way of our company using Windows in Parallels. Anyone have any ideas? This is driving me nuts.

 

[wonder_mice]

Hello,

I have contacted the responsible persons, we are currently investigating the issue. Have you installed Internet Security software with guest tools?

 

[LynseyO]

Internet Security

Thank you for your reply. We are using AVG Internet Security Suite for our virus and spyware protection. We are not using the bundled kaspersky suite; however to answer your question, there is nothing else installed but the Parallels Tools beyond the XP install at this point. In other words, even with a clean build with nothing installed, the phantom fonts show up. So virus protection software doesn't seem to have any part in this.

 

[wonder_mice]

I tried to reproduce the issue and can't find those fonts. How do you see them?

Possibly you have some printing hardware connected to VM? It is possibly that those fonts are installed with printer driver...

 

[LynseyO]

Bare Install, no frills

No this happens on machines that have NOTHING installed but OS X 10.5, Parallels 4 with the tools, and a clean (no updates applied) Windows XP. I can use the SAME XP disc on Parallels, VM Ware, and BOOTCAMP and the fonts DO NOT show up on any of the installs except the Parallels. I have gone to some of my other customer's office who use Parallels 4 and I find the phantom fonts there too. I have photos of the font menus for each instance to show the issue.

 

[LynseyO]

Hello?

Should I just interpret the silence to mean that there is no solution and no further help offered to us? If this is the case, just say so, so we can move on. Paid tech support was of no help either.