Calibre hangs and can't do anything

[vincentnoiseux]

I'm trying to run Calibre on a Windows 7 64-bit system, but every time I start it my computer hangs.

If my task manager is open before my computer becomes unresponsive, I don't see anything out of the ordinary (no spike in CPU or memory usage).

When I force quit Calibre, the computer returns to normal.

I tried running Calibre as admin, different compatibility modes and even running in Safe Mode... all have failed.

Can somebody help me?

[kovidgoyal]

when you say your computer hangs what exactly do you mean? youre mouse becomes unresponsive? your computer becomes slow?

[vincentnoiseux]

Mouse moves normally, but most applications (including Calibre) are saying Not Responding in Task Manager. Can't click on anything on the desktop. If I wait a while (around 10 minutes), I sometime get some activity from Calibre and can perform a couple of clicks before returning to hang.

[kovidgoyal]

weird. You can try running calibre as

calibre-debug -g

from a command prompt and see if that outputs anything useful

[vincentnoiseux]

I've attached a file with the command prompt data, I've had to force quit Calibre from the Task Manager).

[kovidgoyal]

Ah a font problem. Delete the invalid font files calibre is complaining about from your windows fonts folder and you should be fine.

[vincentnoiseux]

Those fonts are not in the Fonts folder of Windows (nor are there any subfolders in there...)

I did a search on the whole system for the Rocki.ttf font and I can't find it anywhere else either...

[kovidgoyal]

Its probably a hidden file. Some windows user will have to tell you how to search for hidden/system files.

[vincentnoiseux]

Unfortunately, most of those are "system" fonts that cannot be moved (from what I gather they are used for rendering the menu bars and other system elements).

Also I noticed that when I click on any item in Calibre, I get a "Link not found" in the Command Prompt. Don' know if this can help.

I'll try a clean reinstall tonight of the latest version...

Thank you

[itimpi]

The Link Not Found message is standard if your reader is not plugged in and can safely be ignored.

[kovidgoyal]

I really doubt that system fonts would be named like the files calibre is complaining about. Usually on windows you have two sets of system fonts, both from microsoft, both named as simple ttf files in the c:\windows\fonts directory. But then, I'm no windows guru

@itimpi: Actually the link not found message comes from the SVG rendering library, when it loads an SVG icon for the interface and the icon has a bug in it (an xlink element whose href is empty or points to something that doesn't exist).

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by vincentnoiseux

Unfortunately, most of those are "system" fonts that cannot be moved (from what I gather they are used for rendering the menu bars and other system elements).

Also I noticed that when I click on any item in Calibre, I get a "Link not found" in the Command Prompt. Don' know if this can help.

I'll try a clean reinstall tonight of the latest version...

Thank you

I'm resonably familiar with Windows fonts and I don't recognize any of those fonts as system fonts. Regardless, they should be in C:\windows\fonts if they are. That's where your error message says they are located. If you've opened that area up and they aren't there, here's a few options:

Open the fonts area with Control Panel | Fonts and double check.
Explore to C:\windows\fonts and make sure your file explorer options are set to show hidden and system files.
Do a search and make sure your Advanced options are set to find hidden and system files. By default, the fonts area is not searched.

I don't really expect any of those options to work, but they are all safe. Finally, I'd be searching in the registry by running regedit.exe and selecting the find command. Fonts to be loaded are listed in the registry. See if you have the problem fonts listed there.

One last thought. Are you using a font manager, like Suitcase?

[chaley]

Some random thoughts:

Originally Posted by Starson17

I'm resonably familiar with Windows fonts and I don't recognize any of those fonts as system fonts. Regardless, they should be in C:\windows\fonts if they are. That's where your error message says they are located.

ROCKI is on my W7 machine, shown in the W7 font manager as Rockwell. I also have GlobalSerif etc, but these are "composite fonts", not .ttf files. The file names are moderately hard to see using Windows Explorer but show up using 'dir' in a dos box.

Is it normal that Mac conventions are being tried when opening the font files? Use of the 'resource.frk' stuff is something I have never run into on a windows machine. It is certain that such opens will fail. Freely admitting that I don't know how calibre's cross-platform setup works, I wonder if it is possible that some part of Calibre thinks it is on a Mac?

I am quite sure that calibre is a 32-bit app and includes a 32-bit version of python, therefore running under W64's 32-bit emulation mode. What would happen if there is a 64-bit version of python on the OP's machine? vincentnoiseux, have you installed python, perhaps to run the deDRM scripts? Could there be any interaction between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions? I am thinking in particular of DLLs. If so, then I can easily imagine all sorts of things going wrong.

[kovidgoyal]

Missing font files wont cause a problem, as they are just ignored by fontconfig, the library that calibre uses to find/use fonts. However, a font file with corrupted data may cause a crash/hang.

calibre bundles it's own python interpreter, having a system version doesn't matter.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Missing font files wont cause a problem, as they are just ignored by fontconfig, the library that calibre uses to find/use fonts. However, a font file with corrupted data may cause a crash/hang.

In that case, it should be possible to just remove the fonts by dragging them out of the Windows\fonts area into another area (temporarily) and see if Calibre loads properly when they aren't there. To put them back, just drag them back in.