The icons in Explorer are displaying with what looks like
256 colors... a recent occurence for my system.

'Show icons in all possible colors' from Display Prop >
Effects has no 'effect' (no pun intended)

One caveat / possibility, I have a Matrox Parhelia video
card that supports 10 bit color, and within it's software
I can set the 'desktop settings' to use 10 bit 'Gigacolor'
whenever possible. Windows was, (not any more) displaying
my icons 8bit/channel 32bit color, but has dropped down to
256 color!

(and no, I don't know what has 'changed' recently in
terms of installed software etc... that might have caused
the problem, b/c if I knew that, I would fix it!)

Display Properties > Settings shows 32 bit currently, and
all programs are running 32 bit, ONLY icons in Explorer
and in 'Open dialogues' etc. are dropping their color
space.

Does anyone have any ideas? I'll certainly support the
forum myself if anyone can help...
Sef.