backdate your firefox to 3.X and see what happens. is there something in FF 4.x that you just have to have?

it's nicer

I'll try that tho, thx. I think this is something beyond FireFox.

- sudden onset

- affects FireFox the most, but appears to affect MS Outlook too; Chrome seems unaffected

- Fur_something test of graphics card seems ok

- yellow and some other boxes on Pelican show ok, other screen elements are missing; worst displays are in 2 different Email web sites I use.

- Goggle News is affected - boxes at top lack coloring
- Google IMage search always shows images normally
- Amazon is affected and some clickable balloons do not show up in FF (had to use Chrome to add some socks to my Wish List)
- IrfanView and Picassa seem fine; MS Word & Excel seem fine

- no matter what, I always see text boxes on the screen - it appears the fill or surrounds are the screen elements that do not display in FF

Only thing I can figure is that maybe FireFox treats the graphics card in a different way than Chrome (thought they all went thru the same Windows interface, but maybe not)

also, FireFox 4.0 worked just fine for weeks or months until this suddenly happened

(it happened after I did a backup and system image, but maybe not right after that - seems strange to infer cause there anyway)

same problems (checked 2 web sites) using FF 3.6

I did not waste (more) time by uninstalling FF 4.0, or rebooting tho...

I'd just use Chrome but there is no damn side bar for bookmarks

i'd be willing to bet that it isn't hardware. definitely software. perhaps there is a problem with the registry. who knows.

can you restore a previous image or restore point?

I hate to try that, maybe could go to an earlier system state. The problem with doing those, is you never know exactly what you all you are going to lose.

I think I'll do a mild Registry scan with Ccleaner tho.

a restore point will not lose you much, if anything.

you can always back up your documents and pictures (the only things i really care about on my computer) and do the full system restore.

reinstalled Adobe Flash player & CCleaner run, incl. their Registry Scan - no change

1st Sys. Restore - no change

Did you have anyone remote in and try and work on your machine? These vendors that use remote services often times install a service on your system to connect through. When they connect they get your desktop in 16 color mode, the problem is when they disconnect sometimes your system stays stuck in 16 color mode.

VNC does this, Symantec, Intel.. you have to disable their service, and sometimes uninstall the faux graphic driver they add on. You screen is the stuck in viewer mode, often this is coupled with lost wallpaper and missing themes in Windows.

UltraVNC • View topic - OneClick:Win7/Vista VNC Helpdesk Remote Support System

Some reference on this in the link above.

nope no svce call remote or otherwise

I was finally able to roll sys restore back far enuff to get FF looking right - that meant BEFORE MS had performed a critical system update on my system w/o my knowledge via the internet.

BUT... BUT the machine then crashed and I cannot get it restarted.

seems like a big hassle to try and move to a Mac

so, I can either buy a Dell XPS if I wait until May 30 for them to build it (and then a few more days to ship) - cost is $700

or I can go over to Office Depot or Best Buy and pick up a Compaq/hp machine

My home machine is an XPS 630i, it about 4 years old now. I've upgraded the memory recently and changed it to solid state drives, but it's still running great! (XPS support is nice as well)

your insistence that this is hardware related is amusing.

ok, so why does the system frequently fail to boot up now?

sometimes it will not even go past the very first BIOS screen

OK, that's a classic symptom of bad memory. Remove all but the minimal and try it, start adding back until it fails again. don't rely on those memory tests, they often can't do much.

fails to get past the first BIOS screen is classic overheating. could be memory, but my money is heat.

you only just now told us this, randy. this is hardware related.

that is FF 4.x, brando.

Forgot to go to pg 2... Deleted my post, I see it's FF4 now. Also saw the post where after uninstalling and reinstalling he said it's normal.

I have customers call in with the same "everything is blown up!" question. It happens when you hold CTRL for a second and move the mousewheel. Or you 'zoom in' (CTRL+ +) as some sites aren't made to 'scale'.

it only only just now happened -- at least this month; happened 1-2 months ago too - I get a large variety of erros & posted some (made me think it was the disk)

so, open it up and reseat the memory? I already did that (months) before

re: heat - how hot should it not get??

the BIOS screen shows temperature data (briefly) and it hasn't gone over 38 oC that I can see

PS - it is working right now; no idea how long that will last