Windows 7: Open/Browse dialog blank

As the title suggests, the 'open' and 'Browse...' dialogs are not properly working for me. They just appear with the address bar at the top and one nexto the okay and cancel buttons. I can type in the bottom bar and it will suggest folders but not the upper. also the Okay button does not work whereas cancel does. other than those there is no UI for clicking folders or anything.
Some things they work fine for, but for several other applications they do not.
It works in notepad and mspaint for example but does not for daemon tools or in many firefox websites.
(I cannot upload a picture here, the browse... button wont work)



I have done a lot of digging and searching but found nothing
(I have already tried sfc /scannow and updating windows)

After some investigation it appears this only affects 32bit applications. I tested IE 32bit and it would error but 64bit works fine and the other programs I have problems with are all 32bit.
I have done a lot of searching and I am beginning to think I might need to reinstall. Any feedback is appreciated!

I was so glad to find your problem, because I have exactly the same issue. No solution, but at least I'm not the only one out there. I too had decided that the problem was 32-bit programs running on my Windows 7 x64 computer: for example, when I run IE8 32-bit, none of the menu items appear on the top, and there are no labels for any of the buttons (home, print, etc.). But when I open IE8 x64, all is well.

Might someone have some ideas? I've gone back to find a Microsoft article on this problem in pre-Win 7 programs (Article ID: 831430 - Last Review: February 28, 2008 - Revision: 5.3) but no luck.

The problem emerged after a system restore (necessary when an update to Spyware Doctor with antivirus 8 crashed the system entirely ), and reinstalling some of the programs seems to eliminate the problem but not entirely.

Am in need of ideas.

Thanks.