[ucurl]

Strange issue today, WinXP SP2 (updating to latest as I write)
Customer PC came in to be cleaned up.

Issue: On some screens & dialog boxes the text is not showing.
In IE6 webpage for yahoo does not show all text, just a black screen in some cases - I know because I can see the underline of some of the hyper text... and if you view source you see it.

Not sure if this is a "Font", Colour or Graphic card issue or something else more serious.
I'm not sure if this was here before I started or not but I suspect so.
I only ran Advance Window Care and Cleanup as a start.

Ran AVG Anti-Spyware and if found a couple of things (minor).
Still stranger is that the AVG Spyware dialog display also show blanks where text should be. but some text does show... so wondering about fonts..

Still investigating - will run SFC / Scannow and check system files

Any ideas, suggestions greatly appreciated.

[leroys1000]

The may have set the font to use truetype only
and caused the text not to display as the font is not
available in truetype.

[TheOutcaste]

Try a different theme, the current one may be corrupt. Text gets set the same color as the background, or a non-existent font gets selected.
Be sure to save the current theme first so their settings aren't lost if that isn't the issue.

HTH

Jerry

[ucurl]

Thanks Guys - Tried changing the Theme - no luck.
The Refresh rate on the monitor is at 60mhz - checking to see if it's related.

[ucurl]

Still investigating... might be a remnant of something like smitfraud - I'm not sure how this may have been cleaned in the past.

Focused on the "Display Properties" and this seemd to be the right place to start....
At first I was not able to change the desktop background... this triggered me to run the "SmitFraudfix" a and doing that appear to resolve that issue - I can change it now.

Other Things I've tried - .....

1) Set the refresh rate from 60 to 85 - no change
2) Went back to the "Theme" and change from Windows XP to Windows Classic - back and forth - no change
3) Went into the "Appearance" tab and tried to reset anything that might have been changed.
4) Have run AVG Anti-spyware, AVG Anti-virus, (Normal and safe mode)
5) Ran SFC /Scannow - and it ask me to load some system files from the CD - thought this might be it!!
6) Ensured MSCONFIG showing all active processed
7) Ran Hijack this - nothing showing that concerns me
8) Ran Combofix - nothing
9) Unable to run Adaware and Spybot as the text does not come up for me to select or chosse the options I want.
Note: This is the biggest issue - not seeing some text I need to see to resolve this.

Leaning towards a registry issue or smitfraud remnant or Theme / Display related issue.

Any idea how to reset the Windows theme to default settings?
Any other ideas greatly appreciated... I am considering closing this one and opeing a "Virus/Malware" post.

Attaching sample screen print

[TheOutcaste]

Just a SWAG, but maybe try re-registering the DLLs and Active-X controls. The malware infection may have corrupted the registry entries.

Open a command prompt and enter the following two commands:

cd /d %systemroot%\system32
for %I in (*.dll *.ocx) do regsrv32 /s %I

If you want to put that in a batch file, use two "%" symbols, i.e. %%I, not %I

HTH

Jerry

[ucurl]

Follow-up
Closing out this thread - marking resolved.

Thought about doing the re-registering of Dll and thought it might take a while doing some hunt and peck

Did an Winxp repair (to catch all Dll's) and it appears to have resolved the issue.