Browser problem I can't pin down...

Certain sites seem to "echo" text when I scroll...

[Robert Charlton]

I've been having a problem for roughly a year now viewing certain sites... and I can't figure out what they have in common by looking at the source code.

What happens with these sites is that when I scroll the lines of text are repeated and overlapping, so they're unreadable.

I thought at first that this might be from CSS layers or something, but checking source code doesn't show that at all.

I was just reading another thread on this forum, about Quicktime movie streaming, and followed the link to [wildform.com ], and voila!... there, in the lower half of the page, is the problem in all its glory on my browser, which is IE 4.0 (a long story, but I've been reluctant to upgrade). I note that site is a Front Page site, but I've had the problem on other sites that I know weren't done on Front Page.

Any thoughts?

PS - Just saw another thread on this forum that mentions a site problem with overlapping text on Netscape. I have no problems at all viewing that site.

[tedster]

I've occasionally seen problems like this on some of my client's systems.

My best guess (and it's still only a guess) is that it's a problem with the browser's demands on the graphics card (and I tend to fault the hardware). What I've seen has happened on perfectly validating HTML, but usually when there are other demands being made as well — java, flash, dhtml, etc.

[Steph]

i see this problem sometimes too, but generally it just before a crash of my browser, with page with a lot of text.
I reboot my pc and everything work fine after...
until next crash :)

[Eric_Jarvis]

I've seen it myself...usually on PCs with an ATS graphics card...I was under the impression that it's a problem with the graphics card communicating with Windows

[sean]

I'm no hardware tech, but you might want to check the percentage of available system RAM when that happens.

[Xoc]

More than likely, it's the ATI video card drivers. The bug-writers, I mean programmers, at ATI are notorious.

I have an ATI video card in my Dell laptop. The drivers scribble all over the screen, puts characters at random locations, trashes video memory. Excel trips a nice little feature in it where it tries to show the entire video buffer in the upper left 2 inches of the monitor. So if you replace your video card with one that has decent drivers, you'll probably be happier.

[stavs]

a long shot - but are your colours turned up to the highest definition in your display settings? - if on a low setting, it can cause pages to stutter when scrolling down.

[Robert Charlton]

This isn't a stuttering. This is an overlapping of lines of text (&/or images). I've been guessing it might be the video card, but I'm still not sure what triggers it off. Excuse my ignorance... I'm not sure what ATS and ATI are. I have an old clunker Diamond Stealth64 Video Card. It's a PCI card, and while I haven't looked too hard, my computer dealer has been having trouble finding me a PCI upgrade; they're pretty much pushing the latest bus technology.

[daiman]

uh huh, same here, although quite similiar to Steph's situation - I however, receive a kernel error that was brought about by IE. Then that same popup error notification window keeps reappearing again and again, I have to hard boot to solve the problem.

I have run into this 'problem' while using laptops. Random website occurences is my best guess. I have my resource monitor on and nothing suss there. I dislike feeling ignorant like this. Please reach me should someone figure this out.
Thanks.

[daiman]

I forgot to add this.

Under IE's menubar, >> VIEW >> TEXT >> [select size]

From a websearch i came across @ [rahul.net...]

However my settings were as per advised. Toggling around with smaller options did improve the overlapping. But I'll be buggered if I wanna go around surfing at "smallest"!!

With reference to the webpage you posted Robert : I dont have any trouble there.

Could you please see if you have trouble with the overlap @ [microsoft.com...]
The whole text portion is all potty for me.

[MaliciousDan]

You might try this one. First uninstall any custom langauge support that might have been installed, japanese hebrew etc (to do this goto add/remove programs in windows control panel), next step is to look under Tools > Internet Options > accessibility and uncheck the box that says "Format Documents using my style sheet". If you have any of the other check boxes checked you might try unchecking them too.

[Robert Charlton]

Daiman - Welcome to the forums. I can't make the webpage you suggest misbehave at all.

>>The whole text portion is all potty for me.<<

Looks just fine on my system. I'm not sure what you're saying with regard to to small text. My problem is text size independent.

Dan - All my Accessibility options are unchecked, so that's not it... or was that directed to Daiman?

[MaliciousDan]

It was for you, I was having a similar problem, did you check for other langauges support setup on your computer?

[Robert Charlton]

>>First uninstall any custom langauge support that might have been installed<<

An aside here... I was thinking that I'm pretty aware of programs I've installed, and, as I thought, no such support had been installed... but I did see something I'd never explicity installed... Microsoft Wallet. I'll bet it is Microsoft's wallet, getting ready to reach into mine. ;)

Anyway, all my options have a clean bill of health. I did notice something yesterday, though, that might give someone some clues... I was getting line repetitions on the beginning and end of a page, but wasn't seeing the middle of the page at all.

I can sometimes fix the display by scrolling the display off the browser window and then back on... but, in this case, I couldn't get the blank middle off the window. What I did was to reduce the height of the browser window so I could scroll the middle section off. This also seemed to help the overall problem a little bit, but not what I'd call really fix it.

The problem pages, incidentally, print out just fine.

[MaliciousDan]

It sounds like the same problem I was having but I can't remember doing anything else to try and fix the problem, I was on the verge of using netscape, hopefully someone can help you with your browser problem before you reach the point of considering netscape instead of IE.

[Travoli]

I had problems exactly like this and was told it was a direct-x / video card problem. Dunno if this helps at all.

[Robert Charlton]

>>I was on the verge of using netscape<<

I should have picked up on Dan's suggestion sooner...

Today I was researching some film credits and got a page on iFilm that had the information... but I couldn't read it... so I pasted the url into Netscape, and voila!... I could read the page just fine. I'm wondering whether this absolves the graphics card.

Lest anyone think that Netscape is the solution, though, a little later the problem occurred again on another site, and I tried it on Netscape again... had to resort to Ctrl-Alt-Del and get rid of Netscape to unfreeze the system.