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Resolved Question

Display adjustments made text entry box "disappear"

Jan 20, 2013 1:46AM PST

WinXP SP3.
Changes I made to Control Panel's Display controls caused the colors to change, so that a website text entry box, normally white with a contrasting color surrounding it, is now colored with the same color surrounding it, thereby losing the appearance of a bordered entry box. I don't seem to be able to put things back the way they were. Any help?

This would be easier to explain if I could include a photo with this post. Is that possible?

Discussion is locked

BudVitoff has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Use System Restore
Jan 20, 2013 1:51AM PST

This is the perfect example of when System Restore will save the day. Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Restore. Click the box that says show more restore points, and pick a date prior to when you made the change. In the future remember that there's no undo for changes you make in the Control Panel!

When you've gotten your system back like you want it, I urge you to get yourself an external hard drive and a good 3rd party backup program. You can set it up to do everything automagically at the time and frequency of your choice. 1 TB external hard drives are about $70 these days and a really good FREE backup program is the Easeus todo backup free which you can download from
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm . That can save you a lot of time and frustration the next time something like this happens. Sooner or later it happens to all computers for one reason or another.

Good luck.

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Thanks for the wakeup call.
Jan 20, 2013 6:01AM PST

I'm embarrassed that I didn't do a system restore before asking for help. I had to go back to early December before the problem was resolved! I was doing this on behalf of a friend -- okay, she's my ex, but still a friend -- and between the two of us we represent almost a century of programming mainframes, which are a lot easier than these new-fangled micros.

I appreciate your comments about backup. She doesn't seem to care about it. With her 2GB of RAM and 34GB of hard disk, she says it wouldn't bother her much if the whole thing got lost. Our daughter, on the other hand, has over 200GB on Carbonite, which I use as well, but recent comparisons have me a little edgy about them.

I'm babbling -- I'm sorry. But as long as I have your attention, the PC in question has become extremely sluggish. I've Ccleaned it, and cleaned and defragged, cleared Firefox browser data, and uninstalled stuff until the wee hours of the morning, and it's still slow as molasses in January. Do you have anything to say about packages like SpeadUpMyPC or others?

And again, my sincere thanks.

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Ignore that last paragraph.
Jan 20, 2013 8:23AM PST

It turns out that the system restore along with all the cleanup I did resulted in a machine that is back to speed. All is well.