title: Emacs on Ubuntu. DIsplay issues: text displayed over other text
body: <p>I'm a newbie to emacs, just starting to like it - but today upon start up the following issue has rendered it unusable.</p>
  
  <p>Problem:
  When I move the cursor forward some, but not all, characters are rendered unreadable. The next letter on the line is displayed over the previous character, not replacing it but displaying both in the same place at the same time. Obviously i can't show this as then text editor on this site is functioning correctly.</p>
  
  <p>A few of examples of what I've tried so far, with no effect.. <br />
  1- restarting gdm  <br />
  2- apt-get install rxvt-unicode   - to check if it was a problem with xterm <br />
  3. dpkg-reconfigure emacs  <br />
  4. completely removing and reinstalling emacs23 along with .emacs config file.</p>