What has caused my screen colours to suddenly go funny?
Q My Dell Inspiron computer has suddenly adopted a black background with white typeface, rather than the usual white background and black typeface. In addition, the headers for Inbox, Drafts and Trash and so on are now in yellow. I have gone through two books, including Windows 10 for Dummies, to no avail.
I also went through Issue 522’s article on the Windows Registry, but nothing. So please, Computeractive – can you help me? Doug Pike
A It sounds like you’ve inadvertently switched on High Contrast mode. This is a Windows feature that changes the operating system’s baseline colours to help those with particular visual impairments.
It can be enabled using the keyboard shortcut Shift+alt+print Screen (Prt Scn) (see screenshot above). While not exactly an obvious combination of buttons, you could’ve hit them while attempting another shortcut, or perhaps you just dropped something on to the keyboard. So, pressing Shift+alt+print Screen will put your colours back to normal.
If you’d like to prevent it from happening again, first press Windows key+r, then type control access.cpl and press Enter. Now click ‘Make the computer easier to see’ and, below High Contrast, remove the tick from ‘Turn High Contrast on or off when left ALT + left SHIFT + PRINT SCREEN is pressed’ (see screenshot below), then click OK.