Hi im using a 19wide cheimei screen or pollyview, I run it at 1024X 768 because 1444 native it far to small anyhow i decided to fiddle round with Nvidia graphics do the calabration thingo where you drag the gamma to red blue when i was finished things seem'd a whole lot darker rich is that how it should be? then changed my sharpness from 2 to 3 then it didnt look like cleartype more without it so changed it back to default 2 i think cant remember. Anyhow i re-enstalled Nvidia again got xp back to normal colouring is there an easy way to make sure your running the right graphics colours sharpness etc????? Noob at all this perhaps a small program that does it auto for you? cheers

Auto calibration is not a good idea as a monitor should be calibrated with reference to the ambient light conditions - a monitor in bright sunlight should ideally be calibrated differently to one viewed in a darkened room. Admittedly this is not very practical. Also, to calibrate with reference to lighting conditions means having some sort of sensor to measure the light intensity and colour (daylight is a very different colour to fluorescent light - our eyes adapt and make allowances for this but your monitor doesn't).

The simplest way would be to adjust the brightness and contrast using a test pattern such as this one .

You could also use a utility such as Monitor Calibration Wizard . This is better as it includes colour calibration for red, green and blue hues.

With both these methods, set up your monitor with normal lighting and make sure there are no reflections from the lights or adjacent windows on the screen. It also helps to match the colours and patterns on screen if you half close your eyes and squint.

I personally use a Colorvision Spyder to calibrate my monitor for photographic work, but this may be over the top for general computing.

Don't forget that a calibrated monitor may still look a little strange to you - we all have differences in our vision and one setting will not please everyone, so don't be afraid to put up the brightness a notch or two after calibrating. I sometimes have to do this on my LCD screen so darker areas are still visible.

hi Thankyou for all that, Uninstalling the Nvidia drivers and re-enstalling should do it to return it yes?

Possibly, although your system may still pick up an existing colour profile.

Right click on a blank part of your Desktop and choose Properties. On the Settings tab click Advanced, then the Color Management tab (I run an ATI graphics card so your tabs may be different but there will be a Color Management facility in there somewhere).

Remove any colour profiles associated with your monitor and reboot. If the display still looks odd then go back to the Color Management tab and add a new profile - choose 'AdobeRGB1998.icc' or 'srgb color space profile.icm' if either are available. Reboot and check.

If still no good then try reinstalling your drivers. Download Guru 3D Driver Sweeper and install the program. Reboot into Safe Mode (keep tapping the F8 key as soon as you switch your machine on, use the cursor keys to highlight 'Safe Mode' and press Enter) and run Guru3D. Choose to remove 'NVidia - Display' drivers. Reboot into Safe Mode when done and repeat until no more drivers are found (the first run may not catch all the drivers).

Finally, reinstall your NVidia drivers. You should now have the default setup.

After you do that you will have to reinstall DirectX from the redistributable download version from here:

http://filehippo.com/download_directx/

cheers i used that guru thing funny thing i had nothing in profile in colour managment just had plug'n play monitor thanks

oh yeah do i need to add anything to colour managment box? like adobe or something or leave it blank now?

If you are happy with the way the screen looks then leave it blank. You could add one of the profiles I mentioned above (Adobe or srgb) to see if you prefer it - just remove it if you don't like it and you should be back to where you are now.

In short, no - you don't need anything in the color management box.