You say you now use Word XP. The most common cause of fonts not showing
in Word menus is that there is not printer selected as default that can
print TrueType fonts. However, that does not seem the most likely cause
here.

I suspect that your "favourite" fonts  are not loading because the files
for the fonts, in one way or other, do not conform to the specification
for the font type. A common problem is that the font file lacks a
particular data/look-up table. In my admittedly limited experience, most
fonts that fail turn out to have been conversions of one kind or
another. Most often, they have been PostScript Type 1 converted to
TrueType.

In all cases of this type with which I am familiar, simply opening the
font file in FontLab and re-saving it will cure the problem. The reason
is that FontLab will generate the font file and supply the missing table
while so-doing.

If you have purchased a license to use the fonts, it would be worth
contacting the source to see if they have a re-release that fixes the
problem. If you have not and these are fonts you want to use, perhaps
this would be a good opportunity to see about getting a good copy from a
good source.

Do let us know.

Tom
MSMVP-DTS