I have had the same problem with missing fonts even though they are installed. it's odd, and I unfortunaly haven't got a solution.

As for the protected fonts issue, legitimate purchased fonts often have a checkbox marked that protect the font from ebedding into documents. I have it you can change it in FG, but I doubt you're allowed by the license agreement.

I'm interested to hear more on this.
I've tested my fonts extensively in the
Windows environment and have run into some
strange kinks with all fonts (let alone my own).
From what I can figure out various versions
of design programs (esp. Quark & Illustrator)
tend to create different results depending on
the version of Windows.
Very frustrating if you tend to lean towards
obsessive perfectionism.

Are you running windows 98? If so I would recommend doing a search for "adobefnt.lst" and then deleting all of the files that it finds with that exact name. Then before starting any other adobe apps start photoshop first. It builds the best adobefnt.lst and all of the adobe apps share the same lst. That will fix some of the problems

Tom

thanks tom.
no, i'm running windows 2000.
it seems to be fonts that have been 'converted' from mac to pc or from t1 to truetype that are at the heart of the problem. i've spoken with adobe tech support (some of the fonts in question were adobe), and the upshot of our back-and-forth dialog was that the problem most likely lies with fonts that have been altered in fontographer (or crossfont, etc). at least that's been our best guess. i'm not entirely sure how illustrator id's fonts for its menu, so i've been unable to confirm this theory, but i can't think of anything else...