To rebuild the font cache in Windows 10, do the following.
- Press Win + R shortcut keys on the keyboard to open the Run dialog. Type services.msc in the Run box.
- The Services console will be opened.
- Find the Windows Font Cache service in the list.
- Click on the stop button on the toolbar.
- Go to the following folder by navigating one folder at a time. Do not copy paste the path directly as certain folders are protected and you may need to press the Continue button to access them:
- C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache
- Delete the contents of that folder.
- Delete the file %WinDir%\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT.
- Now, you can start the Windows Font Cache service which you previously stopped.
- Restart Windows 10.
Note: If you have stopped the service but still cannot delete the files, here is a workaround.
- Download ExecTI.
- Use ExecTI to run cmd.exe as TrustedInstaller.
- In the command prompt opened as trusted installer, type or copy-paste the following command:
del /A /F /Q "%WinDir%\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache\*FontCache*"
This should resolve the issue.
Tip: You can use the following command to stop and start the Windows Font Cache service.
net stop FontCache net start FontCache
Window 7 and 8.1
On Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, the Font Cache files are located directly in the following folder:
%Windir%\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local
There is no separate FontCache directory like Windows 10. In this case, be careful to not delete the other folders. Delete only the *.DAT files related to the font cache.
Note: If your fonts are still corrupted and displaying invalid characters after resetting the cache, the installed fonts in C:\Windows\Fonts themselves may be damaged. To restore the default fonts that ship with Windows, run the following command from an elevated command prompt:
sfc /scannow
Let Windows restore the original font files.
Thanks to winaero.com for the above content.