Sudden Strange behavior in XP

[Guest]

I am running XP Home. For some mysterious reason, Windows and most
applications now have entire fields and areas of the screen that are blank.
For example, when I click start, the window which normally has program icons,
My Programs, Control Panel, etc pops up, but random items are simply missing
or only show the icon with no text. These items cannot be selected. My
Programs does not appear, so I cannot even get to my applications. If I open
Outlook, some folder names are missing and only show the icon, and messages
only show the icon with no words. Again, these items cannot be selected.
The same occurs in other applications. I have all the service packs
installed, Norton Antivirus updated and system scanned, and Spybot updated
and running. There are no viruses or spyware. Any ideas?

 

[Chelsea]

This might be caused by a system font getting corrupted. Right click the
desktop, select Appearance, then Advanced, in the item dropdown box select
Menu and change the font. This of course may not be easy to do if these
various menus have no labels, in which case you will need some pictures to
show you were these things are and do the manipulations on your machine
blind.

Chelsea

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your suggestion. I changed the font and this did not make any
difference. Any other ideas?