Mac OS X says it's missing a font needed to run

[jgbhardy]

So I've turned on my MacBook and once logged in I'm greeted by a message saying mac OS X is missing the for helvetica and needs it to display text.
I'm not able to run any applications apart from
Safari and system preferences all the other apps just crash when trying to load
Any ideas on how to solve this?
I'm on my iPhone so I can't upload a photo of the message soon.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Open Font Book (in the Applications folder) and see if the Helvetica fonts are enabled (there will be more than one variety). You can do this by selecting a Helvetica font family, going to the Edit menu and seeing if it's enabled or not, if it's enabled there will be a Disable entry, if it's disabled there will be a Enable entry.

 

[GGJstudios]

So I've turned on my MacBook and once logged in I'm greeted by a message saying mac OS X is missing the for helvetica and needs it to display text.

What version of Mac OS X are you running?

 

[jgbhardy]

Open Font Book (in the Applications folder) and see if the Helvetica fonts are enabled (there will be more than one variety). You can do this by selecting a Helvetica font family, going to the Edit menu and seeing if it's enabled or not, if it's enabled there will be a Disable entry, if it's disabled there will be a Enable entry.

I can't open Font Book I already tried to do that. I've now installed Snow Leopard on an eternal drive and I'm running off that so that I can check things out. I tried to install a Snow Leopard Combo Update to see if I could reinstall the most of the system but it failed to install.

I'm thinking of just doing a fresh install and transferring my files across.

What version of Mac OS X are you running?

Snow Leopard 10.6.4

 

[DewGuy1999]

I can't open Font Book I already tried to do that. I've now installed Snow Leopard on an eternal drive and I'm running off that so that I can check things out. I tried to install a Snow Leopard Combo Update to see if I could reinstall the most of the system but it failed to install.

I'm thinking of just doing a fresh install and transferring my files across.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4

While booted off the external hard drive can you run Disk Utility's Repair Disk on the internal?

If Snow Leopard on the external is working okay for you, you could reformat the internal, get a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner (donationware) and use it to clone the external to the internal. Assuming your files and such are also on the external this would make the internal an exact clone of the external and you'd be good to go.

 

[jgbhardy]

While booted off the external hard drive can you run Disk Utility's Repair Disk on the internal?

If Snow Leopard on the external is working okay for you, you could reformat the internal, get a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner (donationware) and use it to clone the external to the internal. Assuming your files and such are also on the external this would make the internal an exact clone of the external and you'd be good to go.

I think it's actually a problem with the system files so using Carbon Copy Cloner would just create the same problem. Sadly I can't use the external as it is smaller and so I can't fit all my files on it. I'm going to try and partition the drive install Snow Leopard and import the files and settings.

 

[jgbhardy]

I've just run a Verify Disk Permissions and There are loads so I'm now running a Repair on it hopefully this works.

 

[jgbhardy]

Ok I'm now trying to partition the drive that went wrong and its telling me I can't do it because of this error:

"The partition cannot be resized. Try reducing the amount of change in the size of the partition."

But I've tried reducing the size and nothing changes it still has the error and I've done all the disk repairs etc and it still doesn't work.

Any ideas on how to solve this?

 

[gnasher729]

So I've turned on my MacBook and once logged in I'm greeted by a message saying mac OS X is missing the for helvetica and needs it to display text.
I'm not able to run any applications apart from
Safari and system preferences all the other apps just crash when trying to load
Any ideas on how to solve this?
I'm on my iPhone so I can't upload a photo of the message soon.

There are a few fonts that are absolutely required to run most things, and MacOS X shouldn't actually allow you to rename them or delete them. Never heard of them going missing. The most painless way to fix it is to re-install MacOS X from the installer DVDs that came with your computer.

There is a chance that this was ultimately caused by some hardware problem with your disk drive, so make sure you have a Time Machine backup.