Point well taken, but reinstalling the video drivers is just a few clicks
and a restart, and the fact is, I'm not sure which restore point would
restore the view, and I would have to try a few or just go a while back to
be sure and lose some settings, improvements and apps in the precess. I
reinstalled the drivers just as a vague attempt but I didn't really think it
would help... but the screen was a little dimm and I already had planed to
reinstall the drivers before this other issue came up... and the reinstall
did sharpen up the display a bit, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

I had updated IE6 to IE8 and had some trouble with it so I removed it and
instead installed IE7 which hasn't let me down yet. In any case IE8
wouldn't have helped because I've found out the problem is my user
profile... I created another user account and everything looks good from
there... so now I have to find the way to repair my usual profile.. As far
as I've found out, restoring a backup of the "ntuser.dat" file (ntuser.bak)
may restore the current_user registry hive settings but I'm at the point of
searching for the way to restore ntuser.bak safely. Would you happen to
know the way by any chance? I don't think it's as simple as switching the
file extensions between "ntuser.dat" and "ntuser.bak" or deleting
"ntuser.dat" from another OS, cause that would be to easy and I've read that
there's not much you can do to recover a corrupted user profile


-----------------------------------------------
"Tim Meddick" <timmeddick@gawab.com> escribió en el mensaje
news:OzLlM1E$JHA.1252@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> ...yet you re-installed all the video drivers and mention the possibility
> of a "Repair Install" which is an even 'bigger' thing than a 'System
> Restore' !!
>
> Bear in mind that 'Restore Points', quite often, don't last for ever. On a
> lot of XP machines they are deleted, almost at random. So, you may not
> always have this option.
>
> I really must say, though, I do not think that it's got anything at all to
> do with video drivers.
>
> If you are dead against performing a 'System Restore' (what I recommend),
> then installing IE8 may [possibly] cure the problem...
>
> ==
>
> Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)