Missing text on some web sites...
 

This may or may not be the place to ask this, but I have about exhausted any internet searches and thought maybe someone else has run into this problem.

I have a PC where text that should be displayed is not displaying at all. Most of the time, these are text areas that indicate hyperlinks at web sites like Yahoo.com.

I've tried everything I can think of short of restoring it back to what it was two months ago and all these texts were displaying correctly, but nothing so far has worked.

Any ideas what might be causing this? Thanks.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Online Guest Feedback Coordinator
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

This is a very basic question, but can you replicate the problem with different browsers? It sounds like they worked before but don't work now, right? Did you upgrade anything, like Flash?

Yes, it does not seem to matter what browser I use...IE8 or 3.6.2 Mozilla Firefox. I did upgrade multiple applications about two months ago and that is when it first started, but it is only on this one PC. I did the same updates on another PC with the same applications and have experienced no problems.

I've already added more memory (256MB to IGig) to this PC thinking that might be part of the problem. I was grateful for the extra speed, but no deal as far as this issue is concerned. Was thinking of replacing my video card, but wanted to see if this might be something else first.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Online Guest Feedback Coordinator
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

maybe it's spyware/malware. Try doing a free clean-up with spyware doc, superantispyware, avg, etc. and see if it goes away.

Is there a firewall involved, either on the PC or in the router? It could be a very aggressive firewall privacy setting blocking all links.

malware sounds about right. Have you tried malwarebytes or spybot s&d?

Otherwise, check your browser plug-ins, etc, and try resetting IE's defaults.

-David

I'd guess either some sort of malware or something odd with the machine's color settings. You can look at the latter in the Display Control Panel.

Is the probem just in a browser (I realize you have tried several) or in other apps?

Have you searched in google for your particular laptop model and a description of the problem to see if it might have been documented elsewhere?

That is all I can think of at the moment!

I am thinking more in that direction too! Check your AV/firewall/router firewall settings and see if there is any setting affecting links.

Google - URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocols - if only to rule it out.

It's possible Firefox/other updates may have broken some file associations.

Have you looked at the HTML source of the page? There are three possibilities:

1. The text is there. In that case, it's a browser problem. The next thing I'd check is type style preferences for links. Maybe it's displaying it as white text. (You can also check that by dragging your mouse over where it should be.)

2. The text isn't there, but you can find where it should be in the page source. If it's a regular link, it should be between something that looks like <a href=Web URL>, where the URL is wherever the link goes to, and </a>. In that case, it's something like a firewall keeping links away from your computer.

3. You can't find where it should be. In that case, this suggestion didn't help.

Thanks for all the suggestions thus far. We have and regularly run superantispyware and nothing out of the ordinary has been discovered.

But, I'm going to go back and try a few of these other suggestions regarding firewalls to see if that gets me where I need to be.

However, it is only notable over Internet browsers and it does not seem to matter which one I use...Firefox...IE8. It does not appear in any other apps, so it is definitely just a browser disconnect somewhere along the line. Perhaps due to firewall settings, but more than likely the update I did a couple of months ago broke some file associations along the way. I just can't understand why it is only happening with this desktop and not the laptop that went through the exact same updates, though.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Online Guest Feedback Coordinator
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

So, I went to the firewall connections that I could find and all are either set at medium or medium-high sensitivity. I adjusted the medium-high setting on the Windows firewall to medium, went back to Yahoo and all of the missing urls could be seen; however, after logging into and out of Yahoo!!Mail, they were gone again. Went back to the Windows firewall and it was still set to medium, so I'm not sure why it got fixed at first and then started back up again.

Any other ideas?

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Online Guest Feedback Coordinator
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

Try clearing cache, cookies etc.

you can send that messy, dirty, smelly cash to me.

Did you make sure that all the browser settings are set to default settings? That doesn't make sense because you said it's happening in more than one browser. Care to try another one, like safari or opera just to check if you are getting the same strange behavior there? You can remove it after you test it for a day or two. That would be interesting just to see if it does the same thing or not. It would just be another data point.

I know what you can do. Try firefox in safe mode and see if it exhibits the same strange behavior. If it doesn't, that certainly points to a plug-in or add-on, and we can remove them all, and start over if that's the case. Do you know how to start FF in safe mode? There should be a menu item in the firefox folder under your start menu that says "Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)"

For IE, if you go to Internet Options (either from control panel, or IE/tools menu) on the advanced pane, there's a button to "Reset Internet Explorer Settings", with the explanation that it resets all IE settings to their default condition. However, I don't believe it removes plug-ins and add-ons, but it's worth trying, considering that this machine doesn't seem very usable in the state that it's in. It's up to you if you want to try that or not.

You mentioned the video card earlier in the thread. Are there any driver updates available for it? If you want to eliminate the video card, you could install a remote desktop product on it and try running it remotely. Something like vnc (install the server on this machine, and the client on another machine, run the client on another machine to connect to the server, and you will see your desktop on the machine running the client) or gotomy pc trial. For vnc, there's realvnc or tightvnc. Either one is free. You just need to know the local IP address of the machine you are checking to connect to it from the client machine when you are on the same local area network.

-David