The Adobe UI font could not be loaded.

January 10, 2006 9:48 AM

Photoshop CS2: "The Adobe UI font could not be loaded. For best results, please exit the program and either install it or uninstall other fonts."

Randomly, i've started to get that error message when I start up Adobe Photoshop CS2 (on a WinXP SP2 machine). The warning stops PS from loading...but I can click "OK" and use the app fine (so it is seemingly only an annoyance).

I've looked around online, but it seems like the only advice is to uninstall fonts until the message goes away...which seemed silly and frustrating, but it worked...for a while. Now the error message is back AND a whole slew of fonts have been uninstalled.

Anyone had any success with this? I don't even have that many bizarre fonts installed on this machine (and have had many more on other machines with older versions of PS with no problems at all).

posted by tpl1212 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I cannot speak specifically to CS, but in the past, I have had problems with Photoshop (and other Adobe products) if I have more than 800 fonts installed. If you're over that limit, removing a few more might help.
posted by headspace at 9:51 AM on January 10, 2006

Have you tried the obvious thing of uninstalling and reinstalling the application?
posted by Rhomboid at 10:07 AM on January 10, 2006

From this page

Illustrator, Photoshop, and Photoshop Elements use the ADMUI3.fon font file to display text in palettes and dialog boxes. If this file is missing, or if a large number of installed TrueType fonts prevents the application from processing this file, the application returns an error.


If you install 800 or more TrueType fonts using Corel FontMaster, unexpected font behavior may occur (for example, unexpected desktop or title bar fonts, errors installing fonts, inconsistent listing of fonts in the Fonts folder, errors starting applications). Corel Technical Support recommends that you use the Windows Fonts Control Panel when installing large numbers of Corel TrueType fonts.


The number of fonts you can install and use is limited by available disk space and RAM. After completing any of the solutions above, you can use ATM Deluxe to manage fonts and keep the number of active fonts to a minimum.



Fonts Installed by Windows

Windows installs TrueType fonts into the Windows\Fonts folder. Because Windows and other applications may require one or more of these fonts, Adobe recommends that you do not remove them from the Fonts folder. For a list of fonts installed by Windows, see the document 328520 : "TrueType Fonts Installed by Windows 98.
posted by doctor_negative at 11:14 AM on January 10, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for the replies....I can't find an "ADMUI3.fon" file in my photoshopcs2/Required directory, but I don't know if that means it is missing or that CS2 is configured differently than 6.0-7.x mentioned in that Adobe article.

I have not tried uninstalling/reinstalling Photoshop...i've been putting off that idea.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if CS2 isn't playing nice because I also have CS and Photoshop 7 installed (yikes, not sure why) on this same machine?
posted by tpl1212 at 11:28 AM on January 10, 2006

Best answer: in my experience this problem is not fixable, the windows fonts system is borked
posted by suni at 2:17 PM on January 10, 2006