T30 - Strange Display Problem

[kfree1711]

My wife has a T30, running XP Pro. Has an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 Graphics card. Recently, she has been having a strange problem with it....

If she downloads pictures from her camera to her T30, she can view the fine. In other words, the pictures look perfect. However, if she uploads them to kodak.com or any other website and then looks at them, they look distorted (like the person taking the picture was not standing still). This occurs when she is looking at any photograph online (if she or someone else posted it). If she downloads the picture to her laptop and looks at it (in any application), it also looks distorted.

At first, I thought it was driver, so I updated the driver..no luck.
Secondly, I thought it might be the browser, but it happens in both IE 6.x and Mozilla. I have also attached an external monitor, and it happens when viewing the monitor as well as the laptop screen (so I know it is not the monitor).

Any ideas??

Thanks!

-Kelly

[rkawakami]

Check is your laptop's Display Properties page. Right-click on any clear spot on your desktop, click Properties at the bottom of the menu that appears to bring up the Display Properties window, click the Settings tab and see what the Color quality setting is. Hopefully it will be Medium (16 bit) or Highest (32 bit). If that looks okay, then try clicking the "Advanced" button and go through all of the tabs, paying particular attention to anything that says "dithering", "color curves" or "gamma". Can't tell you exactly what you should be looking for since each video driver has their own setup and terminology.

When you say "recently" she has been having a problem, I assume from that statement that the laptop used to display photos in all applications/browsers without any problems before. Do you know if any software or hardware was installed, removed and/or updated around the same time? Specifically, any software that allows you to extract the photos off of the camera would be something to look at.

By the way, welcome to the forums here at thinkpads.com!

[kfree1711]

Thanks for the info. From what I can tell, everything looks as it should be. As far as any applications installed, she claims that nothing has been installed.

I wish there was an application I could download from the net that would tell me when an application was installed. This might help me narrow it down a bit.

Hmmmm...I know this has to be some type of configuration issues..just not sure where to look.

[OddOne]

If all else fails, as a last resort, you clould try rooling back to an earlier date in windows Xp.

This approach however would not be able to tell you what was wrong if it did help

[rkawakami]

Is there any way you can post an example of what the distortion looks like? If you can't get a good photograph of it with your camera, you should be able to grab a screen capture by pressing the PrtSc button and then open Paint and Paste the image. Crop it down to just the picture/photos, upload it to a hosting service and post a link to it. (If that's not possible, you can e-mail it me and I'll put it up on my site; contact me via PM.) Maybe somebody can identify what the problem is. That's assuming of course that the screen capture HAS the distortion in the first place!

[kfree1711]

Ray, thanks for the quick response...here is the link. Looks like the distortion is there! At first glance, one might think that the sun has distorted the pictures. However, this is not the case. notice the blurred image at the bottom right side of the pic as well as the side of my lake house...the fish was very dead and not moving as well..

One interesting point to mention...normal graphics are fine (browser graphics, icons etc...)..the problem seems to only be with pictures...

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r177 ... y_fish.jpg

Thanks Again!

-Kelly

[rkawakami]

From the looks of it, I would say there's a problem with your computer's handling of the JPG encoding algorithm. It appears that some parts of the image have been grossly over-compressed. Check to see how much compression has been used in whatever picture processing program you are using. Generally located in a Preferences tab.

If this distortion ONLY affects the pictures or images that YOU have personally posted, then that should fix the problem. It's also possible that your picture hosting service (photobucket.com) has a setting somewhere that you can adjust. Basically, the more you compress a picture, the smaller the file gets at the expensive of clarity of the image.

(Sorry for the slight delay.. I was trying to win an Apple iPod Nano in a radio station contest )

[kfree1711]

Last night, I ran a few "tests" to see if this was the problem...to my dismay, it was not. You see, this also happens when she goes to "google images" and selects a random picture that comes up in a search. These images are also distorted (pictures that people have taken, not icons or computer generated images). These images can also be .jpg, .bmp, etc...

This is really strange. My next step is to start uninstalling applications that are not "mission critical", one by one to see if that fixes the problem. If not, my only other option will be to blow away the laptop and start over with a fresh OS install and then all her applications.

If anyone has any other suggestions, PLEASE let me know!

Thanks Again,

Kelly

[Musti]

I'd also test...your internet settings.
You say the photos transfered from the camera look fine, it is only when she uploads or downloads something. Which makes me believe there's something fishy with
1. the DNS your ISP is using
2. the proxy server you OR your ISP is using.

Before uninstalling stuff and going to more drastic solutions, try a different internet connection. Try uploading a photo to photobucket, and send us the link.

Also, uploading different image formats will also help to narrow the problem. If my theory is wrong, and only JPEGs look distorted, then there's something wrong with JPEG compression...upload a PNG, GIF and JPEG of the same photo...