An Extremely Simple Computer Question

Factual Questions
1

When I bring up many sites using Internet Explorer, the text on the screen overlays itself. If I go to CNN.com, for instance, in the upper left corner of the site, the “Hot Topics” logo is on top of the Time.com url.

I also get a message sporadically when I fire up the Start menu that I cannot display all my Start options.

There is some incredibly simple thing I am doing wrong, no doubt, but I have no idea what it is. Messing about with my screen resolution does not seem to affect it, and Windows Help is, as usual, completely worthless, giving me all kinds of information having little or nothing to do with my question.

What should I be changing? I am running Windows Vista, Home Edition, with a Compaq monitor with the default settings.

TIA.

Regards,
Shodan

2

That’s not an extremely simple question.

Did you change your DPI settings? Install strange IE plugins?

You can go to www.opera.com and try using that browser instead of IE.

3

Are you using large fonts? Right-click on an empty part of your desktop, select “Properties”, click the “Appearance” tab, then see what it says for font size. If you are using a large size, try changing it to normal and see if that helps.

4

As for the Internet part, some ad-blocking software can have the effect of screwing up layout.

5

Well, I changed the settings for DPI back to default, but it doesn’t seem to help. I have Spy Sweeper and Norton installed (and running). I haven’t installed any IE plug-ins that I know of. Now the text size is really small but it still overlaps.
Any other ideas?

Regards,
Shodan

6

Have you tried adjusting browser text size?

in IE select View ------> Text Size -------> (pick one)

7

Start menu i’m not sure, it SOUNDS like it oculd just be you tried to pin too many things to the start menu and it can’t show all of them.

I take it you’re using IE7 becuase you have vista? I’m using Vista ultimate 64 bit and IE7 right now. I was going to say possibly an error in processing the CSS layout, but it makes little sense to me as that would probably be a browser issue. Are caught up with windows updates? It could eb a resolved issue that they fixed with updates (hence why it’s not happening to me). Also, I don’t know what graphics card you ahve (integrated or what?) you could try updating your display drivers. If that’s not doing it do this test for us:

Download a new browser (firefox, opera etc) and see if it’s JUST internet explorer that does it. That could get us some valuable information on how to fix it if you want to continue using I.E.

Easier Way:
Bottom right corner of IE window -> maginifying glass -> 100%

8

It says it want a higher screen resolution to show all my Menu items.

This is a good idea. I will try that, too.

I downloaded Firefox and tried it on foxnews.com. It did not happen.

What information does this give you?

Thanks very much for your assistance, all of you.

Regards,
Shodan

9

Don’t use IE.

10

This kind of thing happens to me as well, and I do not have any settings changed from normal, such as font size, DPI, etc. I also see it regularly with ESPN. I think it started happening when I upgraded to IE7 (though I am still using XP). I think some web site code is not being rendered the same in IE7 as it was in IE6.

11

Do you have scripting disabled? That can do inteesting things on sites that use scripts to choose and arrange page content.

12

How do I tell if I have scripting disabled?

Regards,
Shodan