Color corruption on PC - vid card dying or Windows glitch (1 Viewer)

[Seth Paxton]

Being a EE who worked at Compaq for a few years, I'd say I know what I'm doing, but this glitch is really making me nuts.

Bascially it appears that one or two colors on the Windows palette are not being displayed correctly, instead of being a light whitish/blue I'm getting flickering yellow.

It's limited to a small range of color, perhaps even just 1 or 2 actual colors.

Even if I sample the color in Paint Shop Pro it shows up flickering there too as well as if I then paint with it. Even using the color chooser in PSP you still see it, but again only on a certain section of color(s).

Flipping the color depth affects it, but no mode makes it go away.

I've considered a virus, but Symmantic searches aren't helpful so far. The item I most suspect is a patch update for Age of Mythology (to 1.09). I uninstalled AoM but it didn't fix it.

As I said, only a few key colors show this, many photos, web pages, whatever, appear normal.

I've considered trying to refresh the vid card driver (GeForce 2 MX), heck, I've even considered a full on WIN 2000 reinstall (motherboard non-compat. with XP BTW, so no go there).


Has anyone had this problem? Anyone know of a virus or Trojan that leaves this mark? Maybe some AoM players ran into the problem? (BTW, searching at Ensemble and MS has returned no good results so far)

 

[Mark Murphy]

I had something similar happen to me and it ended up being a loose RGB connection to the video card. Every now and then I have to tighten the connection because the problem comes back. This was my original thread about the subject.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Unfortunately that's not it, and I don't think it's the same type of problem anyway. My whole screen isn't losing one color for a second, it is a specific color on the palette that either my software or vid card can't do at this point.

It's tough to tell which since a color depth reset from 16 to 32 CHANGES it, though neither eliminate it.

Again I slightly suspect an Age of Myth 1.09 patch, but I'm not 100%. Heck, it could be the vid card dying. I'm just not sure.


To give an example of what I get, look in any HTF forum at the announcement thread titles. The background color in the "thread" box and the "date" box is now a flicking yellow. Not just solid, but like a color that the card/system isn't quite resolving correctly, a bit of dot crawl maybe though more rapid and random.

I also get it in colors at the SBC Yahoo home page on some of the graphic lines near the top of the page. And of course in some JPGs and PSP as I already mentioned.


A Win2K reinstall is on the way as I prepare the system (and myself) for the trouble. I guess that will tell me if it was software or vid card.

Just aggrevating, especially when you can't really find any online info. I asked here just because WTF could it hurt.

 

[Seth Paxton]

SOLUTION FOUND:

Well, after a Win2K reinstall, which was overdue anyway since my CPU/registry was getting messier and messier, no fix.

Bought (and struggle to install) a new ATI Radeon 9600. No fix. Side note, I had to download and a Hotfix Driver to get this card to work correctly in Win2K, just in case anyone runs into a similar problem.


Final fix - it was clearly a monitor (ViewSonic LCD 19" VX900-2) issue, so I snooped around over there. I found a FineTune solution in which you bring up the Win Shut Down box (make no selection though) which allows you to adjust the Fine Tune to reduce some banding that you see on this darker screen.

That didn't work, although I still did the fine tuning. But the yellow issue would adjust while doing this. That sparked me to consider other monitor control adjustments.

CONTRAST decrease was the key, although I haven't tried the whole variety of settings so it could be a combo of bright, sharp, contrast, etc. By reducing the contrast setting my yellow bleeding cleared up.

NOW, let me add that the ATI card showed a different version of this yellow distortion, looking more like a yellow shadow which helped me suspect some sharpness type issue. Also, I DID NOT adjust these settings in the first place to create the problem, I have no idea why it began to act up and perhaps it could be a monitor failure issue starting to show up. Or it could just be an auto-setting by the monitor that happened without my knowledge.


Anyway, at least if it happens to some other HTFer they might come across this thread. Live and learn.

 

[Max Leung]

I was about to suggest a problem with a video overlay setting, but I guess that's not it?

Oh well. Sounds like a monitor problem after all (can you test on another spare monitor?).