Display changed overnight

[marcorossi]

hi, i have a hi grade laptop with windows xp sp2.

What could make my laptop overnight go from showing images etc perfectly fine to showing gradients badly?

Even when i start my computer up the screen just before the desktop appears show this lack of ability to show gradients properly.
Gradients such as from black to white now show clear banding.  Im also sure that videos also have been effected.  Its just like my comp has decided to turn down the visuals a notch on its own.  I have checked the display properties and they are at 32bit true colour (the highest).  I dont know what else to do, please help.

[Deerpark]

Could you tell us more about the laptop? Make and model?
Did you install or remove anything around the time this problem started?

Even when i start my computer up the screen just before the desktop appears show this lack of ability to show gradients properly.

Do you mean the welcome screen?
How about the loading screen, is that looking normal?
How about safe mode?

Oh and could you please remove those images. They don't tell us anything and take up an awful lot of room.

[marcorossi]

Its a Hi-Grade Ultinote M6550

I dont think i did but i did a system restore to just incase i had installed something and this didnt change anything.

the welcome screen [url[http://www.mistywindow.com/software/software_images/vpc-xp-logon.png/url]

The lighter blue bit in the top left has banding.

Everything else when starting up looks normal.

Another thing which may or may not be significant is that I often connect my laptop to a tv using svideo.  On the day that I 1st noticed the visual problem the button that I normally press along with the "function" button to make my laptop screen show up on the tv stopped workin.  I had to restart my laptop with the svideo cable plugged in to get it to appear on the tv.  To this day, that is the only way it will work.  (i hope u can understand that  )

I haven't tried it in safe mode yet.

[Deerpark]

It sounds like a problem with the graphics card driver. It might have become corrupted somehow.
Did you receive a driver CD with the computer?

[marcorossi]

Just had a look through the discs that came with the laptop.  Only found 1 that looks slightly promising.  It says "Notebook Driver" on it.

It has all the drivers on it, I take it the one im after is the one called "SiS M650 VGA"?

[Deerpark]

Yep that sounds like the right one.
Before you install it I recommend you try to uninstall the current driver.
Go to Add/Remove Programs and look for any references to that driver.
If it's not called SiS M650 VGA it may be called Sis display driver or graphics card driver.

[marcorossi]

Cool, thanks for your help mate.  I'll give that a go and post back again with my results.