Can you post a screen shot?

Then try disabling HWA at Tools | Options | Advanced | General | uncheck Use hardware acceleration.

Please tell us, does this improve the rendering?

thank you for your quick response!

i am totally computer illiterate, but was able to follow your clear instruction - i don't know if this is related, but now i get no notification box at all, only the sound of new mail - i changed the HWA back on, but this did no change it, so i left it off

another thing which is not right, is that the drop-down menus from the command toolbar do not appear until maybe after half a minute to a minute

also there's often several minute's wait for the e-mail account folders loading (i have three accounts) - now i've been waiting for 15 mins and it's still working

i sometimes get an error message regarding the inbox, but it goes away too quickly for me to read

i included the extra problems only to see if they are part of the problem - my question remains the, now missing, notification box for new mail

thank you, Wayne, for taking the time to respond to my question - part of the problems were solved - however, two remain:

- TB border colour became gray instead of the light brown it was - i'm going to post a new question about this

- sometimes the folders for any one of the e-mail accounts do not appear rigjt away, and take forever to load - i'll wait and see if this problem solves itself

Please post the graphics section of the contents at help | troubleshooting

thank you for helping with the black box - the appearance of TB is now also solved (in another thread)