Macintosh: When Application Colors Change Unexpectedly



I have a Macintosh IIsi with 5MB of memory, a 13-inch High Resolution color
monitor with built-in video, 40MB hard disk, and NuBus adapter.

My problem appears randomly, always when running these applications: Telnet
2.3, Microsoft Word 4.0b, and Microsoft Excel 2.2a.

In Excel, when I call up a dialog box (to set borders, for example) the
colors of the box will be messed up. If I keep reopening the dialog box the
colors will eventually change. For example, the box may initially come up
with a black background and black letters, then a blue background with
black letters, than a red background, with black letters, and so on.

It sounds like something is changing the System color table. We have
experienced this when using the Kolor CDEV (the CDEV that allows you to
change the color of the windows, buttons, scroll bars, and so on). If
you're running MultiFinder, one of your applications may be setting the
System color table to its own custom palette. 4th Dimension, for example,
can change the System's color table.

Your workaround depends on whether it's an application or a CDEV that's
changing the color. If it's something like Kolor, turning it off may be
the only solution. Or perhaps there's been an update to the CDEV--check
with the publisher for the latest version. With 4th Dimension, some people
have used ResEdit to eliminate the offending resource. But this causes some
applications to crash, so we don't recommend this solution.

Also, reinstalling the System may be a solution. It could be that your
System color table has simply been corrupted.


Published Date: Feb 18, 2012