Last week I bought an Emachines EL1300G-02w PC using a Windows XP platform. When I first got it, I was able to view web sites and my GoDaddy web based email splendidly. However, I believe that after I was adjusting some screen preferences within Control Panel, I went back to IE to view web sites, I immediately noticed some problems.
The easy way to describe the problem is that almost all web sites are not loading properly or completely. For example, on MSNBC.com (my home page), the blue top header will not load (it shows only white in that area) and the text headings are not justified properly (ie: they are jagged instead of being left justified, etc.). Adjusting the font size (ie: Medium or Larger) has no effect on this. I will try to attach a screen print image or two of this in this post so you can see what I see vs. what you can see from your own PC and you will see what I am talking about.
Along the same lines, I am also having problems viewing aspects of my Godaddy web mail. For example, the buttons that allow me to "Reply", "Mark as spam", "Delete", etc. are missing until you "mouse over" them--and then they show as white squares with absolutely no icon or text (they are completely white). Also, there are no more checkboxes to the left of my In Box messages so I can not delete or reply to these messages unless I open them one at a time (which can get very tedious). Please note that I made NO changes to my settings in GoDaddy's web mail, so this is definitely a local issue specific to this PC. Further, I know this issue is specific to this PC because I fired up the internet on my old PC and web sites (including GoDaddy's Web mail page) load perfectly (FYI, my old PC was Win2000 based). The following is a brief list of the troubleshooting steps I have tried: 1) I went back into the Control Panel, and it appears that none of the defaults that would affect IE have been changed. Then, I went into Tools/Internet Options/Colors and the default "Use Windows Colors" is still the default. I browsed around to try and find what else could be effecting the way IE displays web pages, and I'm at a loss. 2) Someone in this forum suggested that I upgrade to IE8 and try that (the PC came pre-loaded with IE7). I downloaded and installed IE8. There was no effect on the above issues with viewing web sites. 3) I called GoDaddy.com support re: the issues I was having specific to my web based email page. I told them what was going on and they said that it is definitely an issue with the settings on the local PC itself, but suggested that I clear cookies/cache and delete my temporary internet files and see if that corrected the issue. It did not. They also suggested that I try to download Firefox in case it was an IE issue. I downloaded and installed Firefox and the SAME exact issues were apparent (in fact I cannot tell any difference between IE and Firefox in terms of how they display web pages). So this tells me the issue is not within the Internet Explorer browser itself, but rather the PC itself. 4) I called Emachines tech support and explained the problem. They walked me through the following: Control Panel/Network & Internet Connections/Internet Options/Advanced. Once here, we did "Restore Advanced Settings", "Apply", and then "Reset". After that, we restarted my PC. This is supposed to restore the settings of IE to their default settings. I did a restart, but it did "not" successfully restore those settings. They said that the only other way that they know to fix the issue is to do a "complete system restore," which will restore all of the factory settings (as if I am taking the PC out of the box for the first time). I do NOT want to have to do this because that will mean having to reinstall all the programs and data that I spent the last week loading on to this PC!
Any other ideas or suggestions are VERY much appreciated! Ron