Black IE

[Steve Giannoni]

The different "bars" of my Internet Explorer heading are now overlayed
with a solid black cast making navigation very difficult. All
functions otherwise appear to be working. Problem does not happen in
the Safe Mode. Help & advice greatly appreciated & thanks ...

 

[Steve Giannoni]

No "events" preceded onset of the problem. How to deal with the video
card drivers ? ...

 

[Steve Giannoni]

Many thanks for all the detailed info. Unfortunately, you're way, WAY
ahead of me. The system is a Dell Dimension 8200 and I think the video
is GeForce4 MX 420, running Windows XP home. Not ready yet to dig
around inside the system. Automatic updates is probably what brought
me this trouble. Foolish me for expecting a simple solution ...

PS - why does Safe mode cure it ?

 

[Steve Giannoni]

Safe mode loads only a core set of drivers and services, so the
problematic bit might be in what's not being loaded. That doesn't
reveal much, though.

It appears that the Dell Dimension 8200 does not have onboard video, so
you must be using a video card. If it's a GeForce4 MX-420, you can
download the most recent driver set for Windows XP here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71_2.html

I would recommend looking at your Add/Remove programs to see if their
are any nVidia video drivers in that list. Uninstall them and report
into "Normal" mode. Your video will be very basic, as it may just just
the standard VGA drivers. If that's the case, fire up your browser and
see if the problem has gone away. If it has, then we can suspect the
uninstalled drivers as being the culprit. Install the new drivers and
hopefully the problem will not return.

Another thought: If the IE install is just screwed up a bit, you might
get around that by creating a new user account. Try and and see if the
problem goes away. If it works and you're willing to move your files
over, great. If not, at least you have that diagnostic information.

 

[Steve Giannoni]

I have no experience updating video drivers. There IS an entry in the
add/remove programs for NVIDIA Display Driver but I'm apprehensive
about deleting it; doesn't it need the driver for video function? How
do I then install the correct drivers, etc. I am a novice at this so
please bear with me & thanks ...

 

[Steve Giannoni]

Removed the NVIDIA driver but the problem persisted when I ran IE
before the NVIDIA re-installed. The system was very persistent on this
apparently using it's own driver ...

 

[Steve Giannoni]

That did it. Thanks ...

 

[Strobe]

This is a known problem with IE 8. I will assume you are using WinXP and
the Windows Classic theme. Change your theme from the one you are using to
another one. Start IE. Shut IE down and change your theme back to the one
you want to use. Why Microsoft is unable to solve this black bar issue is
beyond me.

Thanks for that info, I also was having the same problem.
It nagged a bit, but I lived with it since I only ever use that IE for
MS Updates and it was already set to go directly to the update page.

Oddly, it only affected one of the 3 PCs here.