just had this problem and finally solved it. After effects and flash wouldn't start up with ae complaining that it was "unable to create font". After a lot of research on the web i gave the following a try ... And it worked beautifully. Seems some of my fonts had become unregistered and all i needed to do was re-register them, which can be done completely from within vista. Here are the instructions i followed:
> 1) goto to control panel --> fonts
> 2) right-click anywhere where the fonts are listed and select install font
> 3) select c:windowsfonts and select all
> 4) select install
> 5) you'll to click a lot of confirmation boxes, i think the button said "yes", but it's worth it. Just staaart clickin.
This re-registered all my fonts even though they were already installed, and solved my problem.
Good luck!