strange fonts/colors

[octoberbabye]

I have Win Me. One night I turned on the computer and some of the fonts in a newsletter and on google were unreadable. On google, all of the links. The words appeared as black boxes.
I have been trying to fix this and partial good results come from changing the font size in view on the tool bar. I have it set to latin based and use courier new for all text. I have my display at 800. I have clicked override special fonts on web pages.
Tonight for some reason, in yahoo mail when I compose the area is grey although I have it set to white.
I did a search for spybots with Ad-aware and Spybot. I have a fast defrag that runs on start up. I also have win patrol so I know when something new is trying to put itself into the system.
I thought it might be a java problem and uninstalled java and reinstalled, and now some java web games don't come up-I keep getting the download box and when I download I get sent to the Microsoft page that says I don't have any java. I have downloaded everything I can from the Sun site.
I've written to two other help boards but no one has answered.
Please help! My many thanks.

[glc]

Have you tried reinstalling/updating your video driver?

[GaryRouth]

. . . and if different video drivers don't fix things, since you're using WinMe - is there any reason you can't try a System Restore? [if you've disabled System Restore, of course, you won't have this option. You can, though, still see if you have a saved Registry from before your current problem: boot with a bootable floppy or your WinMe installation disk (if from CD - "start computer with CD-rom support"), and from the A> prompt, type

scanreg/restore

and choose a date from before the display trouble.]

I'd recommend a "double-check" online scan, to make sure it's not malware causing trouble (and that might've compromised your current antivirus): I like to recommend HouseCall, since it seems to get along well with the locally installed antivirus pretty well. It's at http://housecall.trendmicro.com

. . . Gary

P.S. ... and Welcome to the PC Mechanic forums . . .

[octoberbabye]

Thanks for the replies! Now I know where to come for help.
I did the easiest first, ran trend, and also scan disc, defrag, made sure virus was up to date, ad-aware.
I am now looking to update the driver. Went to drivers guide at this link: http://members.driverguide.com/index...b&jmd=or&fzz=b (I had to log in)
I am confused as to which driver to up date to. I find some that look appropriate.
The card is (from label on computer) 8 mb Nvidia TNT2 Vanta LT graphics card.
It's a compaq 800 MHz AMD duron 256 mb ram with cable connection.

After a few reboots, the fonts are now all courier, most of the sites and links are readable, but I still see crazy fonts on web pages. Right now I have the fonts set to largest, but the size is more medium or larger. Thanks, Janet

[glc]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_66.94

[octoberbabye]

I never would have found that. I downloaded and rebooted and now have an nvida icon in the sys tray. Should I go to my computer and have it search for the better driver?

[glc]

No, that *IS* the best driver.

[octoberbabye]

What I meant was should I run that utilty. It will give me the option to look for the new driver. As you can tell I'm new, and it looks to be working (I can click the icon and edit the settings from the task bar).
Thanks for taking the time to help me.

[glc]

That's not a utility - it's an installable driver package. Run it.