background colors (excel, calc, and new browsers)

I have had a problems displaying background colors when using MS Excel or Open Source Calc. and the newest versions of IE or Firefox. (firefox 6.0 displays colors fine)
I format the cells/row to have background colors but the colors do not display on my desktop.
If I call up a spreadsheet that has been built on another PC it will not display background colors on my machine. If I transfer the spreadsheet from my PC to another PC, via FLASH, the colors will display correctly.

I thought the problem was my All in Wonder 9600XT so I changed it out with a nVIDIA 5200.
The swap out did not fix the problem.

Additionally, I am still using older versions of IE and FireFox (6.0) because the newer versions do not display correctly.

Is this possibly a BIOS problem?