Sorta active static in parts of system text

This is a new one for me... not even sure where to start looking on-line for help, every search criteria I thought of lead me somewhere far afield.

I am trying to get my nephew's old XP Home, eMachine, running right. Among a multitude of other problems and glitches, it has an issue with displaying text.

A portion of any displayed system text (ie dialog boxes, desktop icons, Win Explorer) will have active lines running through it, meaning they shift, not stationary distortion. The first inch or so down the left hand side will be fine, but everything extending to the right beyond that inch has the lines. Very frustrating and very difficult to read.

Text displayed in a browser window does not have this distortion.

It is not location specific on the monitor, the distortion moves with the dialog box, staying relative to the text within.

Is this sounding like an uninvited bug to you? Does to me.

Just thought I would post here incase it is not malware and someone else has had/heard of the same problem.

 

lower your resolution. Does it make a difference?

 

I will try that.
Right now that machine is 50 miles away in another town.
I will probably go pick it up this week and bring it back here to work on, so I will have internet access on my machine and can keep the other one off line during the overhaul.
Thanks for the suggestion, I will let you know one way or the other.

 

It did reduce the static a little... but, lol, when I was loading in safe mode, couldn't help but notice that the white on black showing what all was being loaded, looked like holy hell.

The good news is after doing the malware removal procedures the static went away altogether... so something in there musta fixed it.