A while ago I posted a question about the color depth on my monitor(s). I was saying that, despite setting for 32bit, it appeared that I was at either 16 or 24. The settings seemed to work out to accomodate this theory, and since it seemd to be a problem that happened after I installed my second video card (which I believe is 7 years old), I even tried ordering an inexpensive, recent, PCI video card. Sadly, the problem persisted.

It turns out the problem is something else entirely, but much stranger. It seems that Windows really, really wants me to have icons, in most places, with fewer colors. At most, it's incredibly irritating. I want a nice, attractive operating system, and something is affecting that. I'll try attatching an image of what I'm talking about:



That image should get across what I'm talking about. The problem seems to be affecting nearly everything: my desktop, but quicklaunch bar, my start menu shortcuts, and even my system tray. You can tell from the open programs in the image, that there's a difference between the Firefox icon on the tab and on the quicklaunch. The Winamp icon in the system tray isn't what the options screen is showing, and no matter what I switch it to, they all look like crap!

How do I know I don't just have poor color depth? Well, aside from the Firefox thing above, I recently found that if I try to browse for alternate icons, they look normal in the little icon browser! I mean, if the color depth in all of Windows is bad, I shouldn't be able to see a difference, right? Well, I tried setting some of the icons in my start menu shortcuts to try to force them back to the right colors, but they would switch, then the next time I'd open the start menu they'd be back to old look.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? I've been living with this crappy look for a while now, and it's really bugging me.

This is what I meant when I talked about trying to change the icons:

DAMNIT!!!

This has got to stop. I swear I've been trying to solve this problem for months, a little at a time. A bit of research here and there, some experimentation, looking through options screens, testing some programs, and even replacing the second video card.

Well, as usual, it took a post on the empeg board to fix it. Turns out there's a checkbox in Display properties > Effects, and it says "Show icons using all possible colors." The thing is, it was checked. I tried unchecking it, apply, no change. Tried checking it, apply...eureka!

However, the problem still exists in only the system tray. I put this together to show what I was talking about with Winamp:



So, I still have this problem, but maybe since I mentioned it specifically, I'll find the answer in a few moments

Very good suggestion. I'll try that once my current slew of operations complete Chances are it could correct it or it could put the other icons back into the incorrect mode

I have had this very same problem for the last year to 18 months. I think mine is down to some corrupted data in the registry or somewhere else. It started happening when I had a whole bunch of other registry corruption problems.

I've just learnt to put up with reduced colours on some of the icons on one of my PCs, because it has 4 or 5 years of accumulated software installed on it.

You're not in Control Panel, Accessibility Options, Display tab, High Contrast mode are you? Perhaps with some funky scheme? Just a thought.
- Tim

Excellent! That's that site I posted about on this board for the Who Lock Me program! I meant to go back to see what else he had. Impressive stuff.

Now I just need to figure out how to apply the patch. I clicked on the:
"-NEW- Windows 2000 SP4 : You can now automaticaly patch your Windows of any language. Click Here."
But that just took me to a page with no info on what to do. I tried the manual version too, but I couldn't find the entries they were talking about in explorer.exe.

Naw, I just looked, the manual patching is probably too much for you... Editing and replacing explorer.exe in situ is tricky, and he gives no instructions on how to do that, he just tells you the three bytes that need to change.

First, make sure you're going to his Automatic page by using Internet Explorer and not any other browser. Second, makes sure that you've got the security settings configured to have it prompt you for activeX controls (as opposed to blocking them outright). That should do it for you.

Yeah, I didn't think until later to use IE instead of Firefox. I'm going to try it now.

*edit*
Yup, worked like a charm. Thanks for sending me the link....and I thank myself for posting that link before