How do I fix this random behavior with my Emacs mode line?

I am running Emacs 23.3 on Windows XP. When Emacs is started, the mode line will assume one of these two appearances at random. Needless to say, I prefer the first one. Ho开发者_如何学Cw do I figure out what is going on and how do I make the first one stick?

The images don't show it, but the first one has a GUI type appearance. If I hover over the various bits of text with a mouse, e.g. Help then the text Help turns into a button with shadows etc.

The black mode line appears to be a text mode widget. The only thing that the mouse will change on it is the highlighting.

PS: Thanks JSON!

I vaguely remember this happening years ago depending on whether or not I started Emacs from Remote Desktop. Perhaps there's an issue with color depth?

See if anything has changed your settings to

(set-face-background 'modeline "#000000")
(set-face-foreground 'modeline "#FFFFFF")

(EDIT: Color codes corrected) in any of your .el files.