Screen window colours

Returning from a couple of days away, I switched on my PC to see that the background screen colour on all my applications has changed to wild strawberry from its previous XP standard sandy colour. I can find no way to revert. I have tried system restores, video driver updates and still the colour remains. On printout of a screen capture the printed colour is the original sand, not the wild strawberry. No-one has had access to my machine, and I have scanned for viruses. The screen properties lets me select lots of colours for everything but this main background. I have tried using classic windows but all that happens is the colour goes to purple instead of the usual windows grey. As I look at this current screen the backgrounf to this text looks mauve and the background to the menu bar is the new (unwanted) wild strawberry. Any suggestions please to cause and restoration to windows defaults.

 

Hi,

Silly question: are you sure your monitor is OK? Can you run some sort of diagnostic on it? Do you have an extra monitor to replace and isolate the problem to the PC? This is strange...

 

Thanks, apeferreira, I doubt that it is the monitor as pictures etc, display perfectly, the problem is only in the windows of applications. Strangely, I can set new colours to the desktop, 3D objects etc, this works in such programs as Excel, but not in Explorer or Outlook Express. Even in Excel, the wild strawberry still appears in places such as the back of the scroll bar.
I have tried changing colour schemes but this does not get rid of the problem.

 

I was hoping someone would come up with an answer for you as I have a friend who is having a similar problem with the color. I have tried all the settings, even updated her video driver, but still has that horrible purple color rather than the grey. If you have resolved your problem, please post. She says it's always been that way which leads me believe it may be her monitor.

Ivajig

 

Hi again,

As I can see someone else is having the same problem. If you are sure the problem is not in the monitor, I would reboot in VGA mode, get rid of the video drivers, download the latest ones for XP and re-install them. If you alreday have done that, I'm really lost. Have you tried to play with the screen resolutions and acceleration? Have you tried another video adapter?

The fact that it works OK with some programs and not with others doesn't mean much. I had a problem where a Geology program, graphic intensive and very demanding, presented a problem displaying funny red lines across the screen. Everything else worked OK. The problem was one of the memory chips. Replaced and fixed.

It will be interesting to know when you fix this one...

Cheers!

 

Thanks, guys, I have connected my monitor to a laptop running Win ME and the colours display fine. In desperation, I have run fdisk and re-formatted the drive, and re-installed win xp. At first the offensive pink re-appeared and I could see no way forward, short of hardware repair.
However after going out for a few beers and returning/restarting, the original colours have come back as if by magic. I am not convinced that all is truly well, but while it works, I will enjoy.

 

The one area I've noticed where XP is real finiky/quirky is video. It just does not like some video cards at all. Even some cards where the vendor says "Why sure, great with XP ". May have to do with some other hardware in some cases.

Any chance you could try a different one? A recent NVIDIA with > 30Mb would be ideal.

 

A bit of good humour... maybe you problem resides in the beers... maybe you need beer to drive your PC properly.... sorry, I could not resist...
Cheers!

 

I have become convinced that the problem resides in the video hardware, unfortunately it is built into the motherboard NVDIA GEFORCE MX 100/200. While it behaves I will let it alone, but a friend suggests that I can find a jumper to isolate the card and fit another one. I bought the PC in Bangkok, and don't appear to have manuals for such things, so if it crops up again, I may have to take it in my local Computer shop. I can always have another beer while I wait and it might all look better after. Thanks for your suggestions

 

Thanks to all who tried to help. Turns out i was wrong about the graphics card being onboard, it is a separate card, as my local computer shop ascertained when I took it in with some other problems as well as the colours. Turns out the card was not seated properly in its slot, probably never had been. As simple as that.

 

Thanks for the update. Always nice to see resolutions on these things.