Windows colours and fonts corrupted

[les]

My windows colours and fonts seem to be corrupted. This screenshot
http://62.204.33.93/Image1.gif shows the display properties dialog.

Notice that it is about twice the usual size and the colours are very
strange. Fonts are very big too so some words are truncated. In some
cases the font colour is the same as the background so the text is
invisible.

Obviously I have tried changing the colours/themes but they don't stay
how I set them and they also seem to change randomly

I don't think it's a driver or hardware problem. I have another
windows installation on the same box which is fine. Maybe it's a
virus, but I did as scan and nothing was detected. I suspect it's
something wrong in windows itself.

Can anyone advise?
Thanks
Leslie

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Change to Windows XP Theme, and reboot. If the changes are reverted, then it
must be a background application doing this.

Isolate the problem by clean-booting the system.

How to perform a clean boot in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434

You may also try creating a new user account to determine if this is a
system-wide problem or not.

--
Ramesh, Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Shell/User

Windows XP Troubleshooting
http://www.winhelponline.com

 

[les]

Thanks Ramesh,

I tried loging in as another user and the same problem occurs. I also
tried a clean boot and again the same problem.

The first sign of trouble is before login. The login box is
enlarged... wider than usual with bigger text although the title bar
of the login box is the normal height with normal font size.

Any more ideas would be welcome..

Thanks
Leslie

 

[Keith Miller]

Check under Accessibility Options in Control Panel. On the 'Display' tab, uncheck "Use High Contrast"

Keith

 

[les]

Good idea Keith... but it's already unchecked

Another strange thing is the event viewer. If I look at an event's
properties the window is large, as are the text and buttons, except
for the description of the event which is much too small to read. I
have to copy and paste the text into notepad to see it.

I have a 6 week old copy of my system drive. Is there any part of the
windows folder I could use from this to replace what might be causing
the problem? I tried replacing the whole windows folder... that got
rid of the display problem but caused a few more other problems.