Screwed up Color Correction

[Mercutio]

I have a notebook here that is somehow re-setting a gamma value someplace in Windows to an eye-searing level. I don't know what's causing it, I just want it to go away.

I've tried changing values in the Adobe Gamma Control, set different .icc files up in the Windows Color applet Power Tool, and screwed around with driver gamma/brightness settings. All these things lead to a tolerable display brightness until the next reboot.

The gamma level goes back to eye-searing at the login prompt. It's fine in Safe mode or during bootup until the login screen appears.

It doesn't help that this notebook has a Radeon Mobility 9000, which is only barely supported by S*ny or ATI. Current Omega drivers won't load on something this old; I'm having to dick around with gamer tuning tools.

This notebook has every piece of content creation crap in the entire universe installed on it. I can't tell what's doing what, but there's absolutely no software starting up on this PC right now aside from Windows. In theory I should have something not unlike safe mode settings right now, but that's obviously not the case.

So does anyone know how to re-set Windows display settings?

 

[mubs]

When the Guru himself is asking a question, it's a serious problem.

 

[jtr1962]

Are you sure it's not reverting to something like 256-color (8-bit) mode rather just changing gamma levels? 8-bit color will look just as craptastic as a poor gamma setting. especially on an LCD.

Anyway, if this is the case a friend of mine recently had the same problem. He went nuts trying to fix it, and drove me nuts in the process with a bunch of phone calls. He did finally manage to fix it by uninstalling and reinstalling Spyware Doctor. Evidently the first install had somehow screwed something up where his video couldn't do better than 8-bit color in 1024x768 (although he could get 16-bit color in 640x480). I wouldn't be surprised if there's some piece of software in there which is somehow doing the same thing which Spyware Doctor did on my friend's machine.

Another very remote possibility is that the display is just out of adjustment. Does it have separate hardware adjustments for things like color temperature, gamma, brightness, and so on like stand-alone LCD monitors do?

 

[ddrueding]

<edit>

Nevermind, I re-read your post and you covered all my stuff. Other than start uninstalling programs until it goes away.

 

[Mercutio]

I eventually found the .ICM files located under \windows\system32\spool\drivers\color and uninstalled those. The list on the problem PC was quite a bit longer than on any of the XP machines I have access to.

Fixed nothing. The color profile being referenced according to the Color Control panel applet did not appear to be either a file on the computer or as a string anyplace in the registry.

Uninstalling the ATI driver or starting in VGA mode "fixed" the problem, in that Windows would only start up in 640x480 standard VGA thereafter. Any attempt to switch to a higher resolution or color depth seems to invoke the color correction, as did wiping and reloading the ATI driver.

This notebook has a 120GB drive and I swear it has every program ever made by Adobe, MGI, Ulead, and Corel on it. I don't know if the installs are legit or not, so I'm loathe to just remove them.

I also checked the Windows services list. The change happens when the login screen appears, before users log in, and isn't a global startup item, which suggests it might be coming from a service, right? Anyway, nothing there either.

I have to admit I'm stumped on this. It's clearly something in the Windows install someplace, but what and where it's happening is eluding me.

 

[Bozo]

Is it posible to do a repair install of Windows?

 

[Stereodude]

Aren't there brightness, contrast, gamma, etc sliders in the control panel? It sounds like the gamma one is not at the default position.

 

[Mercutio]

Aren't there brightness, contrast, gamma, etc sliders in the control panel? It sounds like the gamma one is not at the default position.

All those things are functions of graphics driver software and can be supplanted by any number of color correction apps.

In this case, there's got to be a registry setting someplace that's overriding everything I've tried to do. I'll admit that I have almost no experience with display calibration, but seemingly the only fix I have is to not allow Windows anything but the Standard VGA driver in low color.

Reinstall? I'm contemplating it, though there's nothing else wrong with the PC and I'm not sure if repair installs fix this particular issue.

 

[Fushigi]

Uninstall the ATI driver, remove all references to ATI from the system (registry, Program Files turds, etc.), re-install.

This is a S*ony Viaiaiaiaooaoao? I'd suggest using whatever driver they have on their support site. Dell, for instance, says using non-Dell nVidia drivers is a "bad" thing; I don't know if S*ny would have monkeyed with the Radeon reference design or not.

 

[Mercutio]

It's not ATI. If I bump the standard vga driver to 32 bit color it does the same thing.

 

[Howell]

I've not much experience with color calibration either.

I would audit one of the registry keys. You'll have to find which one. Can you narrow down if it is a machine wide setting or a per user setting?

I also checked the Windows services list. The change happens when the login screen appears, before users log in, and isn't a global startup item, which suggests it might be coming from a service, right? Anyway, nothing there either.

I don't think so necessarily. Can't you change the background, resolution and other visual aspects of the login screen by editing the Default profile? I would imagine gamma would be in there too.

 

[Stereodude]

Reinstall?

 

[Mercutio]

That's what it appears to come down to. There's about 50 places in the registry on this PC that seem to refer to "gamma" or "brightness." In many cases I don't know if they're official windows settings or settings for some program or others. I'm not going through all of them.