You probably have an extension installed which is causing that fault.
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

Thanks for the reply. Appreciate that! You think an add-on or my current theme might be the culprit? One way to find out is to systematically disable them one by one and see what happens. I'll give that a shot and post back my results.

If you use a custom theme then revert to the default theme (Tools > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes)

I am indeed using a custom theme. Classic Compact 4.0.8 to be exact but that wasn't the cause of the anomalous behavior. I was also using an add-on for Classic Compact called Classic Compact Options 4.0.8. After disabling this add-on the check-marks did appear where their suppose to. So that is where the bug came from. By the way my OS is: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1. I also have the the same set up on a Windows XP Professional 32bit SP3 machine and do not encounter the same behavior. So the problem lies with Windows 7 and/or a 64bit operating system. I'm a newbee to this forum. Is there a way to notify the developer of this add-on about this bug? He really should be made aware of it.

There's a support thread for Classic Compact Options here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2139611&start=765

I posted a thread at Ken's blog site prior to your last post the-edmeister. So that should inform him of the bug. Thanks for all your help guys! I truly do appreciate it! Best wishes, ritchie58...

After some experimenting I narrowed the problem down even further. The add-on has a option where you can change the OS background color within the theme. I had made a change to that but after reverting back to the default setting everything is just fine now. Problem solved and I can still use the add-on! Cool! I also let Ken know about this fix I discovered.