NT's Fancy Colors for Arev (AREV Specific)
At 08 JUL 2004 12:04:40PM Ralph Johler wrote:
We had a problem with Arev last night, were a few of our pc's that run overnight processes, and a few that start up their arev processes at 6am, obtained a rather ugly color set. (The NT Fancy Colors). All our pc's use the same Arevc.ini file (Arev 3.12) from the same server and folder.
Restarting arev on these pc's fixed the issue, on all but one of them. It still has a wrong color set, but only in windowed mode. When we display the arev session in full screen, the colors are correct. We have restart arev and even cold booted this pc. Windows apps are fine, it is just the NTDVM (ie Arev) that is effect.
Based on the correct colors appearing this pc in full-screen mode and all other pc's in both modes, this can't be an Arev issue. I know I off-topic a bit. I am hopeful that someone may know where in the black heart of NT, these evil color settings are secretly stored/set and/or overriding Arev's color settings.
For example, the arev 'application window' says 'light gray' text, but the windowed arev session text appears to be displayed as 'dark magenta'. When in full screen the text is correctly displayed 'light gray'.
On message boxes, the box background is black, and so is the response text. When you switch to full screen the text appears in the proper non-black color.
In both the above cases, all the user has to do is switch modes, and the colors change. There is no need to reset or restart arev, or even re-type the text.
Other colors are similarly shifted, but not all colors. Just enough to make the windows ugly ugly ugly or unreadable.
Matt Sorrel reported a similar condition back in 2000. Unfortunately there was no confirmed fix posted. (No fans by this lcd monitor!). Here's his post FYI:
At 08 JUL 2004 12:36PM Matt Sorrell wrote:
Ralph,
Not that it's any help, but I think the issue finally just "went away." We have upgraded some of the OSs and PCs since then, but I cannot remember any specific action that we took that resolved the problem.
Sorry I can't be any more help than that.
At 08 JUL 2004 01:49PM Ralph Johler wrote:
Matt
Thanks!
Hmmm…so it seems you're saying that Arev is like that punching bag clown, that wobbles but never falls down, then bounces back up again?
We're looking into a possible 'spy-ware' infection at the moment.
At 08 JUL 2004 02:12PM Donald Bakke wrote:
Ralph,
If all else fails, swap video cards to see if that makes a difference.
At 08 JUL 2004 07:36PM Steve Smith wrote:
Ralph,
Disable screensavers.
Try altering the screen res downward (to 800x600 or 640x480) and see if the problem persists. If so, could be (a) screensavers not resetting the video driver / buffers properly (b) buffer overrun in one particular program (into the palette area of RAM) © video driver bug (d) one program which uses an uncommon video mode in the workstations concerned (check systray also for the icons common to non-MS software and to all affected workstations).
You may also have a S3 video card installed - these are notorious for buggy drivers. Memory "expansion" or "RAM cleaner" software can also be at fault.
Steve
At 16 JUL 2004 05:13PM Ralph Johler wrote:
Thanks so much for all your help. Trying your ideas left us with one possible idea - corrupted user settings.
We deleted and then recreated our user, and it worked! Somehow (maybe some spy/malware) corrupted the NT user's settings, especially those involving the colors.
Everything back to normal!
Thanks again.