Not a GW related injury, but nevertheless.

I have a computer at my house that has reverted to 4 bit color, 800 x 600 res mode.

This thing is:
P4 2.4ghz
512 PC3200 Dual channel
NVidia 5200
LCD 17" Monitor
Soundblaster Something or the other card
Gigabit LAN Card

While I was at school, someone decided that randomly pressing buttons on the screen would be the best way to fix the problem. They started a windows reinstallation. I finished the install, but there were several files that would not copy, or were corrupted. I have clean slated this machine several times now and that is the first time I have fgotten the bad files, or corrupted files error.

Now would be a great time to mention that while my back was turned, they did a backup of the hard drives in their current state, so using the backup drive for it's intended purpose (if there is a data error) is out of the question.

Currently, I am reupdating the computer, but it is operating at this extremely low resolution and color management option. The visual quality also degrades over time, reverting to black and white.

The computer has had Norton on the entire time, and a couple of spyware programs going.

After the updates are done, I will be swapping the video card from another computer to see if the one in is bad.

Any ideas?

I have an update.

The video card from that computer is in the one I am using right now. (it pays to have matching video cars in your computers)

When I uninstall the video card driver I can run windows in 32 bit only and it looks, but does not perform good. When I reinstall the driver, from Microsoft, or Nvidia, the computer reverts back to 4 bit mode after the restart.

Hopefully some more info might shed some light in the direction of those that might know.

Interesting issue - almost certainly has something to do with Nvidia's driver (what you call "microsoft's driver" is just a certified version of nvidia's driver) and/or its interaction with Window's graphic subsystem. When you uninstall the driver you revert back to a generic VGA driver that doesn't offer any acceleration (hence its bad performance).

What happens when you try to change the color after installing the Nvidia driver? Is the slider locked?

As soon as I install the NVdia Driver, from either Microsoft's website or NVidia's site, the computer requires that it is restarted and upon startup it is in 4 bit 800 x 600 mode. The slider does not have any other options at this point.