Windows text colour issue

[Mr_Jon]

That "1" is usually white.

This has happened before, this time last year. No idea what caused it, but it only went away after going through 3 different new monitors. Today, however, it has returned. I've not installed anything, updated any drivers, nor buggered anything up for days - it's appeared out of the blue. It's like there's a colour filter being applied to text making it appear all janky and hard to read. I've used my phone to picture them in case a screencap doesn't, but it's pretty damn visible in these images. Here's some more:











Last time out I went through windows support (the official one through settings, not the cringe forum), and the guy said it's hardware...but I don't believe that. This is on a different gpu (AMD, now Nv) and different monitor to when it occurred last year. Any ideas?

[Jonj1611]

Have you tried slapping it?

[Jonj1611]

Possible cable issue?

[AGTDenton]

Possible cable issue?

Was just thinking that, really common with the old VGA cables.

Incidentally, what type of cable are you using at each end?
Any conversion going on, DVI to HDMI for example.

[kalniel]

Type in 'adjust cleartype' in windows search bar and you get the option of a clear type wizard which might help align text better with the pixel layout of the monitor.

[Jonj1611]

Was just thinking that, really common with the old VGA cables.

Incidentally, what type of cable are you using at each end?
Any conversion going on, DVI to HDMI for example.

I have had something similar with failing VGA cables.

I am currently using displayport at the moment

[DanceswithUnix]

Try a bootable Linux usb stick or DVD media to rule out hardware.

[Mr_Jon]

Nah, i bought a new cable when it first happened. Displayport to displayport (tried new hdmi's too). Last year I tried multiple windows re-installs (even on virgin drives) to no avail. Linux was harder to tell with - at that point I was looking at the screen so closely I'd lost objectivity - while it wasn't as bad, it still didn't look right...but it'd been years since I'd used linux and it could have been normal.

Stuff I ruled out for definite was gpu (inc drivers, as happened with both red and green) and cable. I'd love to blame windows, and while I'm not entirely ruling it out (despite multiple fresh installs), it's probably hardware. Year-old monitor 1 did it, new replacement monitor 2 (different brand) did it on arrival, new replacement monitor 3 (different brand again) did it on arrival, new replacement monitor 4 (same brand as monitor 1, different model) was fine for a year. Until yesterday. All that monitor changing occurred within a few weeks of each other this time last year. The only spare monitor I have here is some eye-bleedingly sub-hd small res where everything looks terrible anyway

When the problem reappeared yesterday, the computer was idling while I was away from it for ten minutes or so and noticed it immediately upon my return.Tried a couple of reboots, persisted. Buggered off out for the day, turned it on this morning (after unplugging, which occurs every night) and it's back to normal, thank god. Still leaves me none the wiser as to why it happened or what causes it.

[Mr_Jon]

Type in 'adjust cleartype' in windows search bar and you get the option of a clear type wizard which might help align text better with the pixel layout of the monitor.

Interestingly enough, that made it worse last year. There's no reset to default option on it anymore, and as none of the combo's were any good I was then stuck with text that was both fuzzy and colourful!

[philehidiot]

Have you tried checking the chromamapping?

If you have AMD drivers you should be able to do this easily. I do not know how to do this on Nvidia hardware. Check what your monitor can do and then check what the card is outputting. Mine is 4:4:4 but you can change it.

You can turn off cleartype. If you are using Windaz 10 you can search for cleartype and the first result gives me the option to turn it off completely.

Other things to check are the bit depth of the output is matched to your monitor.

Another thing to try is to delete the drivers for the display and the GPU and let them reinstall. Display drivers can be deleted from device manager and the GPU drivers are best removed with a third party app called display driver uninstaller.

Additionally, you could try booting to safe mode and seeing how the text is there.

There is also a thing called "Windows display colour calibration" which may be worth a look.






Never mind, I've just read your stuff above. It's hardware. Almost certainly.

You don't have integrated graphics do you? Another GPU to swap with?

[Mr_Jon]

Pretty sure it's the monitor. In recent weeks, cold boots have resulted in lines across the taskbar in windows, which is solved by turning the monitor off and on again. Now does it daily. Initially thought it was still a windows problem as hadn't spotted in during the boot process or sign in screen, but this morning I saw it on the pre-windows bitlocker screen too. If it is the monitor, that's some bad luck with four in a row being squiffy.

[Millennium]

I was going to put this down to mystery gremlins but I would agree the monitor is faulty. I hope you are in your 6 year warranty. You did buy it from Richer Sounds, right?

/s

[jk1989]

I had something similar happen on my monitor which turned out to be the actual HDMI socket on the monitor. It was resolved relatively cheaply by my local IT shop by swapping the port out.