I've been having issues with some programs (utorrent is a great example) where I couldn't see text on dialogue boxes, in the preferences, half of the display, etc. I found the solution on utorrent's site! I thought I'd installed a bad version of .NET framework or something (wasn't sure what each program used) or perhaps a bad version of some old display driver. Come to find out... it was my antivirus program!
From utorrent (microtorrent):
I get blank dialogs / no text in various places.
Norton AntiVirus and McAfee Anti-virus have a "Buffer overrun protection" option in their settings. This must be disabled to fix the issue.
I just thought I'd share this since it took me awhile to find out what the problem was. I disabled it in my McAfee and the problem disappeared entirely.