i dont know if anyone has been having this but i was having it really bad the other day
i havnt been busy lately so i havnt used houdini as much (since the last update) so it might have been fixed
i run on a mac 10.6.1 intel (but this was taken while i was using my old mac mini running 10.4)

I think the dashed lines appear in the textbox when you are running a simulation. Values should re-appear when you stop the sim…

Far bottom-right of the UI : “Interactive Updates”, ironically mapped to the key. Hit it.

nope, it happens randomly, i'll come back and it'll be like that

and nothing i do brings it back, no simulation is running

Delete your Houdini preferences directory.

Ok i'll try that next time it happens
but one time when modeling (far into a project) it would happen every 2-3 minutes without anything playing, it wouldn't even be calculating