Web pages not rendering properly

[guitarzan]

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop with Windows 7 which seems normal, except web pages do not render properly in IE9 or Firefox 8, but Chrome is fine... For example, the top bar in Google, which should be black with white letters, just shows as a series of white boxes with a blue border. The pic below is a screenshot. Other pages are messy as well, but again, no problems in Chrome.

Resolution is 1366x768

http://www.picpaste.com/Image1-8qHQDXwE.jpg

Does anyone know what setting is off?

 

[linney]

How to use Reset Internet Explorer Settings (RIES)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737#appliesto

Internet Explorer add-ons: frequently asked questions

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Internet-Explorer-add-ons-frequently-asked-questions

What is it like from Safe Mode with Networking?

Advanced startup options (including safe mode)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Advanced-startup-options-including-safe-mode

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929135

What is it like if you test with a different Windows user?

 

[guitarzan]

Create a new user account, and IE and Firefox are normal.

With this user account, tried IE with no add-ons, same problem. Cannot figure out what would affect both IE and Firefox, but not Chrome??

 

[guitarzan]

Oh, and safe mode with networking is the same for this user account

 

[kjv1611]

Have you checked to be sure it's not a proxy server mixup? Just one possible place to look, anyway.

What about security apps? Anything installed affecting one login, but not the other?

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[guitarzan]

This machine did have one of those fake "Windows Antivirus" trojans running, I was able to go into safe mode with networking, download and run Malwarebytes Antimalware, found and cleaned the trojan, all seems fine, hijackthis looks clean.

I just checked proxy settings, nothing is set. It had AVG Free 9.0 installed, I uninstalled it and installed AVG Free 2012, ran a full scan and no threats found. The browser problems happened even before upgrading AVG. No other security apps I see besides what I mentioned.

I don't see any software running for this user that wouldn't be running for the user I created... Very strange; could be just a corrupt user profile, what throws me is, why would it affect IE and Firefox but not Chrome?

Here is a screenshot of free.avg.com from the laptop. Compare to the real page... you can see that some images display, like the one near "AVG Mobilation" (is that even a word?? but I digress). However, the (i guess) background images are not showing... Never seen that situation before.

http://www.picpaste.com/Image2-NJ13ntYr.jpg

 

[guitarzan]

Ahhh obviously I haven't tooled around in Windows 7 much... If I select an Aero theme (rather than the "unsaved theme" in "My Themes", which is what is set currently), the browsers all look normal. Not sure why Chrome is unaffected though?

 

[BadBigBen]

probably, because Chrome just ignores the theme that is in use...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[guitarzan]

Thanks Ben. Never realized that the Windows theme affected browser pages in any way. In this case, the effect was big! The user of this laptop didn't complain, this was more for my own education... what caused this? Because I know one of my users will ask the same question down the road...

 

[BadBigBen]

>> what caused this?
I don't know, possible cause would be a corruption of the theme files or how they are configured... and by resetting to Aero, caused it to be overwritten...

I know that IE and FF both use the Windows window manager to display the borders and are thus affected by the theme in use, e.g. Aero transparency etc., like I mentioned earlier, Chrome uses it's own window manager and thus just ignores which theme is installed...

now why that would interfere with webpage rendering, I have no idea what API's IE/FF use to display webpage content...

I would just write it off as a minor annoying bug, that is easily circumvented...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"