Garbled Drop Down Lists

My computer has developed a rather strange problem, to wit : Most of the time when i am at a web page where there is any kind of drop down list, the list will display symbols of various kinds in the list instead of the information its supposed to display. That is, instead of displaying dates, for example, I'll get a list of zeroes, or hearts or a combination of symbols of various kinds.
If I hit the "refresh" button on my browser, the list will now display the correct info. However, the minute I pick an item from the pick list, and the page updates, the drop down list will be garbled again. I have to keep "refreshing" the page each time to see the info on the pik list.
I'm tired of having to refresh each page, each time, to see what my choices on the list are.
Does anybody have any ideas on what might be causing this ?

Note : I have win98 second edition ; also I've installed all the critical updates available up to this point.
My browser is 6.0

Any help would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks,
Ray C

 

Ray

Don't know exactly what this is so begin with a cleanup.

1.Configure CleanMgr to max settings
Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sageset:1
The above need only be ran once (these settings will be remembered as the default until another sageset is ran).

It will present a menu select all except compress, then

Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sagerun:1
As long as /sageset above has been ran on this computer from now on the /sagerun is the only thing that needs to run.
____________________________________________

2.Cleanups
These are for 95 98 ME only!

Boot to DOS (not shutdown to DOS). While booting hit F8 to startup menu. Chose "command prompt only ".

Type these commands exactly hit enter at the end (do not type the notes that are in parenthesis like this).

del c:\*.swp (may get file not found, is ok)
del c:\windows\*.swp
deltree c:\windows\shelli*.*
deltree c:\windows\temp\*.* (answer yes to all) "ALL "
deltree c:\windows\tempor~1\*.*
deltree c:\windows\history\*.*
deltree c:\windows\spool\printers\*.*
Hit Ctrl Alt Del to reboot!

3. Lastly

Spyware and adware removal

SpyBot http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download
Run this twice delete all it finds, "ALWAYS" run this before AdAware.
Leave all it wants to leave after the second run.

Mike