Overlay Video is dark in Windows - Please Help!

[xeen]

I have a laptop with the NVidia GeForce 440Go card. I just re-installed Windows XP. It's completely clean with nothing installed yet other than Dell's newest video drivers. But there is a problem - all video that uses overlay (DV-AVI, MPEG, MPEG2, etc...) is much darker than it should be. Before I installed the Nvidia drivers, the video was using Microsoft's generic driver. The overlay video was just fine and the way it should be then, but obviously I had to install NVidia's driver because Microsoft's driver sucks. But now all the graphics and refresh rates are great with the NVidia driver, but the overlay is dark for some reason and I cannot figure out why. In Display Properties -> NVidia Settings -> Overlay Control, everything is at default levels, and also all the levels are at default in Windows Media Player too. Of course, I can always raise the brightness of the overlay in either Windows Media Player or NVidia settings, but I dont want to. I want it to be like before, with everything playing fine with all video settings at default levels. Please help, this is driving me nuts. Thanks for any help.

[Ramirez]

This is so very true, apparently NVIDIA occasionally changing default video overlay Brightness/Contrast levels in different Detonator drivers revisions, I've tried them all, and IMO Detonator 43.45 series drivers seem to give the most clear and bright overlay at default settings.(very close to the default WINXP video driver 12.xx series)

You can D/L these drivers here>> 43.45_win9x.exe (http://www.3dnews.ru/files/pub/drivers/nvidia/43.45_win9x.exe) or 43.45_win2kxp.exe (http://www.3dnews.ru/files/pub/drivers/nvidia/43.45_win2kxp.exe)

[xeen]

Thanks for the info, but unfortunately I cannot use those drivers. My card is in a Dell Laptop, and I must use Dell's drivers. They're always almost identical to the Nvidia drivers, but branded by Dell somehow. I've tried to install original NVidia drivers in the past, but they didn't work.

ALso, I really wonder why NVidia does this. Why don't they just leave the brightness and contrast levels the same. BTW are you sure that's the reason for the problem?

[Ramirez]

Yeah, its looks like you're right; I've notice the following note at NVIDIA's drivers page.
NOTE: GeForce2 Go and GeForce4 Go mobile processors are not supported in this driver. Please contact the notebook's manufacturer for graphics drivers for your notebook PC.
This is sux! I'd expect more from 18 megs drivers package supposedly called "unified", anyway don't loose hope, here> 2044.10xp.exe (http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/nvidia/nvidia%2044.10xp.exe) are the most current Dell detonator FX drivers (hell! they're even more current then those on NVIDIA web site) somebody heavily modded these drivers to support every exiting NVIDIA's GPU under the sun,give it a go and hopefully this might fix your problem with the overlay.

Btw: yes, I'm more the certain that the problem with the overlay originate from NVIDIA's drivers, sometimes the differences in overlay are only marginal (or none) and sometimes it's very dark (the most resent drivers seem to be OK though)now why they're doing it? I'm afraid only god and NVIDIA's drivers development team might answer this question.:D

Good luck. :)