I have an XP box, sp2, fully updated. It appears to have an infection of some kind. All the fonts loaded in c:\windows\fonts keep getting deleted. This causes the machine to only have system fonts and most screens are quite unreadable gibberish. I can load a font into the folder and within minutes it is deleted again. I have Symantec AV, MS Antispyware and HiJackThis. All run clean. Can anyone help me? Thanks, Dennis.

I saw the same problem when a friend (who doesn't even have an Internet connection) loaded a Disney children's CD on his Win XP PC. Whatever caused the problem, it left only his Marlett font. I was able to help him fix it by walking him thru running System Restore ... had to tell him where to click by counting icons in his menus since he couldn't read them.

First make a backup copy of the c:\windows\fonts folder next time you reload the fonts from your Windows disc (easier to recover). Then set the File Attribute for each font file to "Read Only" and see if that helps.

Your problem might be your antispyware itself: Some ASPs have a "Kill On Sight" setting and get a little trigger happy about Windows folder files. If the ASP is set to silently KOS changes to your Windows folders and you reload your fonts the ASP may quietly delete them again.