Loaded too many fonts

now my mac sits at the desktop screen yet doesn't display any of my stuff on my desktop nor does it display my dock. I was told that my computer is trying to add all 5000 fonts that i downloaded into memory (yea i'm a total idiot). How do i rectify the situation? im not at home yet, but i was told to boot in safe mode (holding shift as i start up) would help me out and i could delete the excess fonts and this would work.. is this true?

My mother did that, too.

You can sit before your computer and wait till you get something, also. But the safe mode could work too. I never used it.

Once you manage to get to your desktop, go to Library (in your Home folder) and move the "Fonts" folder on your desktop. Reboot and all these fonts should not be a bother anymore. Just reinstall the ones you like, but try to keep under 500. You can still keep the rest somewhere and add them when you need them.

So your computer eventually loaded all the fonts and the desktop came up? How long did that take? The safe mode startup didn't help at all

You might need to use a boot disk to access your hardrive--so that you can take out the fonts.

It took several minutes.

If you're courageous, boot with Commad+S. You'll reach a command prompt. There, write:

Your short username is the name of your home folder.
That way, you'll have all your fonts in a folder called Fonts on your Desktop, unless you installed the fonts for every user, in which case we'll use a different command.

This will move the shared fonts folder to the root of your hard drive.
If unsure, run the two commands.

Once done, enter "reboot".

So I decided to mess up my situation even more and I just tried to boot from a mac os x (yes the first!) and it didn't work so I tried to install mac os x (why I thought this would work I don't know) it hung up on the install and didn't install properly now my computer stops at the grey apple screen with the swirly bars continually moving. I still have the fonts on there.

You mean you tried to boot up off the osx install disk?

And then tried reinstalling the system?

If you did that and it failed--try it again.