Hello.

I turned on my PC this morning, and noticed that the dark backgrounds of websites or Steam or the dark bits in my desktop wallpaper, are extremely dark, they're pitch black!

I have the BRIGHTNESS and contrast turned all the way up, i fiddled with the settings of the MONITOR and the DISPLAY/resolutions settings, and it won't change..
All other colors are looking normal, and they're very bright, but the black/dark blue bits of my Start Menu background and Steam backgrounds are so pitch black as if they are immune to the brightness option..

I just tried playing The Elder SCROLLS IV: Oblivion. While i was outside in a field, everything looked bright and great. When i went into an underground crypt, i could only see the torches on the walls. I couldn't see anything around me!

It's as if something is maximizing the darkness of dark colors and making them pitch black, and immune to bightness.
I suspect that something in my video card, or RAM, or monitor, has gone broken causing this abnormal color damage..

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, using a SAMSUNG SyncMaster 226BW 22'' 1680x1050 monitor, running a GeForce 8600 GT and AMD Athlon 2x3Ghz 6000+

Any help appreciated!I had a similar but different issue once where everything was whiter than normal and bleached out. It was able to be corrected thru video card driver update. In the past, I had a CRT monitor get darker, but it was the monitor crapping out and nothing was brite and vibrant with it. If you have a spare display kicking around or can borrow one from a friend etc, you could rule out graphics driver or video card and determine if the monitor or not I suppose.