High Contrast display problem

[Halcyon]

All of a sudden my display has a super high contrast issue. Everything was working fine and all of a sudden a warning pops up saying that there was a problem with iClip (a clipboard extension/program I use). This extension automatically loads on startup, so I disabled the extension, I've repaired permissions (just in case) and zapped the pram...plus restarted the computer twice.

It starts fine, after I log in the background picture displays fine for a few seconds and before it finishes booting up the display goes into a very high contrast mode.

Anybody has any ideas what can be the caused, most importantly, how to fix this. I just hope it's not the video card cause my Mac is out of warranty.

BTW, I'm on a 21" iMac running 10.5.7
TIA

 

[chrismacguy]

Try activating "High Contrast Mode" - somewhere in Display preferences. That might reverse the effect somewhat (Or it might correct it if its already enabled).

 

[Halcyon]

Thanks Chrismacguy...what you're suggesting is in System Preferences > Universal Access and that might just be the problem. There is a slider to enhance or reduce contrast and that might be origin of the problem. As I'm away from the computer right now, I'll check later today and report back.

Thanks.

 

[Mal]

FYI, the keyboard command Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-"," or -"." will adjust the contrast up and down, respectively, and it's entirely possible those keys got hit or that the application triggered the same functionality, so you can save yourself some time and just hit that repeatedly and see if it lowers the contrast back down to normal.

jW

 

[Halcyon]

Thanks Mal...that's exactly what triggered this whole situation. A while back my cat laid on the keyboard and managed to press just the right keys to activate "switch to black-on-white". That created some havoc because my old 17" iMac had just started developing the dreaded colored vertical lines syndrome and I thought the whole thing just went totally crazy on me. Well, it seems Boris the cat has strike again...but I'm glad the issue has been resolved.

Thanks everybody.