Screen too dark with "other applications control color settings"

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I got a strange problem: Today I noticed that my screen was too dark. But for some reason only the mouse cursor was brighter than all the rest. In other words: White looks white in the mouse cursor, but all the rest looks more grayish. So I went to the Nvidia Control Panel and switched from "other applications control color settings" (which is the default option) to "Use Nvidia settings" with all sliders set to default position - and the brightness was back to normal again. So the problem is solved with "Use Nvidia settings" as long as I keep all sliders (Brightness, Contrast, Gamma) are at default/centered position. But why the heck does the default "other applications control color settings" option lower the brightness? I did a reboot and didn't launch any applications, but the issue remains. I'm out of ideas. So what do I miss? What application or Windows setting may cause that? My system is running 64-Bit Windows 7 (RTM) with latest NVidia drivers (v196.34) installed. Graphics card is GTX260.

[kypec]

My system is running 64-Bit Windows 7 (RTM) with latest NVidia drivers (v196.34) installed. Graphics card is GTX260.

I've no nVidia card actually but more often than not all vendors tend to introduce "new and undocumented" features in their latest drivers which eventually exhibit as "bugs" to most of users. Try to roll-back to some older version of ForceWare drivers and see if the problem persists.