In Internet Explorer the background colors and patterns do not display. It displays as white on the monitor. Also on many websites some controls, (Buttons, List boxes, etc.) also do not display. It has been like this with IE7, and now IE8. I have updated Java, Macromedia Flash Player, as well as all updates for Internet Explorer. I added a video card and switched from the on board video to the video card and still could not get the backgrounds to display. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,
I use 4 browsers to test websites and have no similar problems. My machine is set up to detect bad Flash, etc. The browser crashes.
I would say that it is in Tools, Internet Options, Advanced off the bat; but I could not tell you what is not enabled.
My observation would be to think back to when it occurred and what you had done just previous to it happening. I upgraded the MS .Net framework on a machine once and for some reason it changed the default for HTML list items to lower case Greek. Just because you install something and everything seems to have gone fine does not mean you had a successful install.
Peace,
Clarke