Hi, everybody. I posted this in the display forum last night, but hadn't received feedback as of this moment. I'm re-posting it here to get more exposure and hopefully some suggestions. Thanks.
Original Message:
Hello. I'm having a strange display issue, and I'm out of ideas at the moment. This morning, I booted up the computer and noticed that Windows appeared to be in 256 color mode. You know how a high resolution photo looks when you're in 256 color mode? That's what my desktop wallpaper looks like. But it extends beyond the desktop to browsers and seemingly anything controlled by the OS.
Acer AL2051W and Sapphire X1800XT
I checked the obvious, but the display properties window says that I'm currently in 32-bit mode. I switched to 16-bit mode and back to see if that resolved the problem, but it didn't. I checked the cord connections, and they are secure. I thought perhaps it was a monitor problem, but after running a couple of games, I'm convinced that isn't the issue. I downloaded the most recent ATI drivers and installed them, thinking that even if the driver itself wasn't the problem, then the mere re-installation of the drivers could remedy the problem. It didn't.
The one thing I have noticed is that when I force a preview of my screen saver via the display properties window, the screen flickers twice (as if the monitor is initializing), and during the flicker the color is back to normal. This flickering only occurs when previewing one of several OpenGL based freeware screen savers I've had installed for over a month. After discovering this, I thought perhaps I had downloaded corrupt software. However, I ran McAfee and AdAware and found no threats.
I have never had this problem before, nor have I heard of it. As I mentioned, I'm out of ideas. It's not keeping the PC from running properly, but it is annoying. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for reading the long post.
Original Message:
Hello. I'm having a strange display issue, and I'm out of ideas at the moment. This morning, I booted up the computer and noticed that Windows appeared to be in 256 color mode. You know how a high resolution photo looks when you're in 256 color mode? That's what my desktop wallpaper looks like. But it extends beyond the desktop to browsers and seemingly anything controlled by the OS.
Acer AL2051W and Sapphire X1800XT
I checked the obvious, but the display properties window says that I'm currently in 32-bit mode. I switched to 16-bit mode and back to see if that resolved the problem, but it didn't. I checked the cord connections, and they are secure. I thought perhaps it was a monitor problem, but after running a couple of games, I'm convinced that isn't the issue. I downloaded the most recent ATI drivers and installed them, thinking that even if the driver itself wasn't the problem, then the mere re-installation of the drivers could remedy the problem. It didn't.
The one thing I have noticed is that when I force a preview of my screen saver via the display properties window, the screen flickers twice (as if the monitor is initializing), and during the flicker the color is back to normal. This flickering only occurs when previewing one of several OpenGL based freeware screen savers I've had installed for over a month. After discovering this, I thought perhaps I had downloaded corrupt software. However, I ran McAfee and AdAware and found no threats.
I have never had this problem before, nor have I heard of it. As I mentioned, I'm out of ideas. It's not keeping the PC from running properly, but it is annoying. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for reading the long post.
AOL Kaspersky also has a superior detection rate.
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