Strange things with my XP (links unvisible)

[Peter ON5US]

Hi,
Windows XP Home Ed. is doing some strange things on my friends laptop
(HP Pavillion).

1) Some links on internetsites are unvisible. For example: when he goes
to Google, and he enters a word, and looks it up, Google is giving all
the related links, but in those links, the search-word is unvisible.
(see pic on site http://users.skynet.be/on5us/tekoop/ ).

2) The color of his Start-button is not white (like it should be), but
black, and it looks misty. (see pic on site
http://users.skynet.be/on5us/tekoop/ )

3) When he opens a program, there should be some text in the blue bar
above the program. For example: "Untitled - Notepad", when he opens
notepad. But in my friends case, there is nothing in his blue bar.
(again, see pic on site http://users.skynet.be/on5us/tekoop/ )

A few months I made a complete backup of a clean installed XP with
Ghost, and when I restored this backup yesterday, the 3 mentioned
problems are gone.
But after a while (a few hours), we have this 3 problems again.

I have no clue what could cause these problems.
Anybody an idea?

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Do you think, maybe, it might be a virus or spyware?

 

[Peter ON5US]

Do you think, maybe, it might be a virus or spyware?
I allready tought about a virus, but everything has been installed
without internet connection.
When the internet connection was configured, the laptop was allready
protected by a firewall (Sygate Personal Firewall) and an anti-virus
program (AVG Free).

But maybe there is a virus in the master boot record.
I am considering to erase the MBR with 'disk edit' and re-install the
whole stuff. But before I do this, I want to scan the MBR for virusses.

Is it possible to scan the MBR?