IE8 menu bars go black- what's happening?

I'm Using IE8 on an IBM R61 ThinkPad laptop, Win XP SP3, everything fully
updated.
The menu bars on IE sometimes show as black when I open IE- tried running it
without add-ons, problem persists. I can hover over the bar and open drop
boxes such as "Favorites", but unless I do that, all I see are black bars .
This is only happening in IE8, other programs (Word, Acrobat, Photoshop etc)
are not affected.
It is an intermittent issue, sometimes IE8 looks fine, sometimes I get the
black bars.
Suggestions please as to
1. What's happening?
2. How to fix it.
Benny

I had that happen once. On reboot everything was back to normal.

"Benny" <benny@reply.to.newsgroup.only> wrote in message
news:u8egn$bVKHA.4688@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> I'm Using IE8 on an IBM R61 ThinkPad laptop, Win XP SP3, everything fully
> updated.
> The menu bars on IE sometimes show as black when I open IE- tried running
> it without add-ons, problem persists. I can hover over the bar and open
> drop boxes such as "Favorites", but unless I do that, all I see are black
> bars .
> This is only happening in IE8, other programs (Word, Acrobat, Photoshop
> etc) are not affected.
> It is an intermittent issue, sometimes IE8 looks fine, sometimes I get the
> black bars.
> Suggestions please as to
> 1. What's happening?
> 2. How to fix it.
> Benny
>

Pick one or two:
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...lack%2Btoolbar

Benny wrote:
> I'm Using IE8 on an IBM R61 ThinkPad laptop, Win XP SP3, everything fully
> updated.
> The menu bars on IE sometimes show as black when I open IE- tried running
> it
> without add-ons, problem persists. I can hover over the bar and open drop
> boxes such as "Favorites", but unless I do that, all I see are black bars
> .
> This is only happening in IE8, other programs (Word, Acrobat, Photoshop
> etc)
> are not affected.
> It is an intermittent issue, sometimes IE8 looks fine, sometimes I get the
> black bars.
> Suggestions please as to
> 1. What's happening?
> 2. How to fix it.
> Benny