Vista application windows now gray instead of white

Factual Questions
1

I am using Vista Home Premium 64-bit. I just did an upgrade to install Office 2007. After the required reboot, I am noticing that all applications now have a slightly gray background instead of the usual white. I do not know if this is coincidence or cause & effect.

This includes IE, Outlook, Word, and also non-Microsoft apps such as Quicken, NoteTabLite, etc. This makes the screen a harder to read, and makes it very difficult to find the text cursor, which is now only slightly darker than the background, although the arrow cursor is still white so really pops.

Windows personalization affects the title bars of applications but not the backgrounds.

Is there any way to fix this?

2

I don’t think you are going far enough into the personalization process. I know you can change the color of the application windows.

Right-click on the desktop and select “Personalize” or open up the Control Panel and double-click on “Personalization”.

Click on “Windows Color and Appearance”.

Click on “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”.

In the “Appearance Settings” window, click on the “Advanced…” button.

In the “Advanced Appearance” window, select “Window” from the “Item:” drop-down list. The drop-down list will allow you to change pretty much all the major elements of the Windows interface.

Now, as to why the windows changed colors, I have no clue, but this will help you fix it.

3

Something more insidious is going on. I found what you pointed me to. When I made sure that Windows was set to white (255/255/255), I noticed that the arrow cursor was significantly whiter than the square showing me what “white” looks like. If a color is set to 255/255/255, that should be as white as you can get. Despite tweaks to “windows” and “application background” to set them both to utter whiteness, my problem is not solved.

4

And try as I might, screen shots don’t capture the cursor so I can’t show you what I’m seeing.

5

Sorry, then … I got nothin’.

6

Its Microsoft telling you to dump the pile of crap that is Vista and upgrade to Windows 7.

7

I rebooted and it’s fixed. When I shut down Windows told me not to power off because it had a metric shitload of updates to apply. There was also an Office update involved somewhere, too. I suspect that somehow Windows dimmed the entire display down a notch preparing to something else that it never quite got to.

So, it’s OK now. Thanks for your support.