pull down menus can't be seen

Hello, I have a nuisance problem with my XP. Starting a week ago, whenever I click on a pull down menu, the box opens but the I cannot read the list. For example, if I click on View, I cannot see the choices like : refresh, toolbars, text size, etc. I discovered that if I drag my mouse down, I can make them appear. Same happens with Tools or Help or with Edit.

This problem happens when :

1. I am using windows explorer
2. Internet explorer
3. windows media player
4. paint
5. music match JukeBox
6. streets and maps

I am sure it happens with other programs as well.

With AutoCad - the problem clears up right away
With Word and Excel - I have no problems

Anybody else have this problem ?

 

???

 

Have you recently started using a different "Theme" for your computer.

You may have the text set to a colour you can't see.

Right click a blank area on the desktop, select Properties/Appearance/ select the advanced tab and open up the drop down box and select menu. From here you can change your text colours if you need to.

 

I have the same problem. If I want black text on a white background, what do I enter in the boxes in the menu selection under the advanced tab? In other words, what should be in the boxes following 'Item:' and what should be in the boxes following 'Font:'?
Thank you.

 

I have had a similar problem for some time, but i is getting much worse. I am running XP Pro and many of my pull-down menus are okay, but others aren't. For example, on my program menu, all I can see is the shadow of the menu, not the text (and highlighting the text does not make it visible. I can see right through the window. On some web pages (not all) in both IE and Firefox, the text is visible, but the menu is transparent, so text is superimposed over text. This effect is inconsistently applied on a variety of programs, as well as all of the pull-down menus from the Windows Start menu.

I've tried changing and modifying settings in the Themes/Appearance section of the control panel, but it doesn't help at all.