Stop the Internal Error Message in Fireworks CS4 or CS3

Question

About 8 hours ago I ran into what is apparently a fairly
common problem for many people using Fireworks - the error message
that wouldn't allow me to save anything. Luckily, I paid attention
in class long enough to at least know to save my work often, so I
didn't lose much - just a basic wireframe that I threw together in
15 minutes or so. Thankfully, I tried saving when I did or this
would probably be a very tearful night for me. Instead, it's just a
long night. I can deal with that.
But, before I pat my iMac on the top of it's screen and say
"goodnight" I wanted to share with you the secret to "fixing" the
error message. Hopefully this will help those poor souls in the
future who need a little guidance from someone who's been there,
done that, and is too tired to design the t-shirt. This method will
also work on Windows machines.
I'm not saying this is guaranteed to work for you, but I'm
telling you it's worth a shot. It only requires a little of your
time to do and will hopefully be the fix you need. If it's not,
please accept my sincerest understanding of your frustration and
try another method. This fix suggests that you have added, removed,
or relocated fonts on your computer since the last time Fireworks
worked properly, however, even if you haven't done any of those
things I'd still recommend giving this a try. Here's what you do:
1. Open your favorite font manager software. I prefer the
pre-installed Font Book on the Mac, but you can use any font
manager that you want. Some good commercial font management
programs for Mac include, MasterJuggler, Suitcase Fusion, FontAgent
Pro, and Font Explorer X. For Windows you might want to try, Font
Fitting Room, X-Fonter, Suitcase for Windows, OT1 Font Manager by J
M Berthier, MainType, FontExplorer for Windows, Printer’s
Apprentice, FontAgent Pro for Windows, Typograf, or FontExpert.
Those are in no particular order, just in case you were wondering.
2. select all of your installed fonts - including your system
fonts. Run your "validate font" command for the font management
program you're using. Sit back and let it work. I had more than
6,000 fonts on my Mac, so it took a few minutes to run through all
of them.
3. Your font management program should let you know which, if
any, of your fonts are corrupt, duplicates, or otherwise
dead-weight. Chances are there will be a few if you're getting the
internal error message at start-up or save with Fireworks. You need
to delete or at least remove these fonts from the fonts folder. I
had, and I'm ashamed of this, 256 duplicates and 135 dead fonts on
my poor computer. But, in my own defense, I did just reinstall many
of the fonts a few days ago and was planning to gradually work
through them to pull out the dead/unwanted ones. I should have done
that before putting them to disc last time, but no... I wasn't
thinking.
4. once you have the fonts removed/deleted that produced
errors or warnings during the scan with your font management
program you might want to run the scan one more time just to be
sure you got everything out. If everything looks good, you can now
quit/exit the font manager.
5. here's where things will seriously divide for Windows
users and Mac users. Therefore, I'm not going to fully explain
where you need to go or how to get there for this step, but I will
provide the basics. On your computer, you need to find the folders
for fireworks that contain your preferences for the program (hint,
look in the user's appdata folders, which is hidden, for Windows or
the user's Library for Mac). Inside the preferences folder you'll
find a file that houses a list of fonts, probably called fontlist
or something very similar. Delete it. You might also wish to delete
the cache for the program preferences. Those need to be regenerated
in order for this to work.
6. Find your computer's font cache while you're looking
through the massive amounts of folders and delete the file there
too for a little added security that this will work.
7. restart your computer.
8. open Fireworks and create a new file. Save that file to
your computer in whatever format you want.
If the program opened, the file saved, and you didn't receive
that same old error message, congratulations, it worked! You may
have to re-establish your preference settings, but you shouldn't
have any other problems.
That is the best I can do this evening... or morning I
suppose it would be. Best of luck to you!
-Skip

Answer 1

djbroklee wrote:
> i'm on the struggle still, i've done the uninstall
reinstall thing,bought a
> font manager even though i don't go big on fonts,cleared
cahces,did
> regedits,you name it.
> the fight continues.
> as far as support from adobe they pretty much don't care
they got my thousands
> already this quarter.
> i'm thinking about a system restore now, pretty much
lost out on those last
> two days of pay and now that today is about over i have
nothing to lose if i
> can't get it fixed.
> anyone have any ideas out there?
> it's too bad i committed to adobe before accepting these
adobe type jobs.
> worst case i'll do the work on mirage until i can
finally get the quick
> background drop of fireworks again.
> i didn't pay thousands but it has never even hiccupped
no matter scripts or
> tasks i crammed into it.
> this fireworks issue sort of thing is what put me off
adobe in 2000, no
> support for issues,and wonky worksmanship.
>
> anyone have the answer thow it over to me,i could surely
use the catch up on
> getting paid thing right about now.
An update is being made to address some major problems, if
you hold
tight you might find a solution soon.
Dooza
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