Pictures in Word 2002 are black boxes

[khalprin]

All my pictures show up as black boxes. I can click on the 'Drawing' toolbar
button (and some others) which will make the display refresh and the picture
will show correctly until I scroll it out of view - then it comes back as a
black box again.

I've unchecked the 'Picture placeholders' option, and also updated my video
driver to the latest available.

I'm using Windows XP SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop. This problem just
showed up about a month ago; things used to work correctly. Does any one
have any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Try reducing or turning off hardware acceleration in Start |
Control Panel | Display | Advanced | Troubleshooting.

Another possibility is described in
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=827302 "TIFF image appears
dark when you insert it into PowerPoint 2003".

 

[khalprin]

Thanks, but still no luck. Turning hardware acceleration all the way off had
no affect. I checked out your link about the TIFF images. The pictures in
my document are screen captures pasted directly into Word - so I don't think
they were in TIFF format when pasted. Also, they appear correctly (not
darker than expected) when I take some action that causes Word to refresh the
display.

To add to the mystery, I just realized that PowerPoint does the same thing
when not viewing the slide show. Viewing the slide show causes the pictures
to display correctly. Editing a slide shows the pictures as a black box....

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Sounds like a display driver problem to me. Make sure the "Use
high contrast" option is turned off in Start | Control Panel |
Accessibility Options | Display. Also check the website of the
manufacturer of your graphics adapter to see if there is an
updated driver available.

 

[khalprin]

Thanks again - still no luck. High contrast is turned off. I have the
latest version of the video driver installed (had to get it from Dell instead
of the manufacturer, due to the fact that it's for a laptop). It's from
nVidia and their site says drivers for mobile versions of their cards have to
come from the computer manufacturer.

Looks like I'm going to have to live with this for a while...