Well a while back I played Penumbra and I decided to switch the gamma settings on the game. It crashed, and somehow the gamma and game video settings carried on to my desktop, and ultimately everything. In games I see a distinct red green blue tint on some stuff, as seen here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9131634/screen.png
Help would be appreciated.
GPU Borked? Have you overclocked it at all?
No it is completely at stock values as it was when it came here. The problems only became apparent after Penumbra crashed. I have tried updating drivers but to no avail, and I have also tried tinkering with my monitor settings.
Here is another screenshot of it
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9131634/2011-03-04_00001.jpg
Hm, so it's ALWAYS there? Tried switching monitors to see if its really a GPU fault? Could also try a live Linux CD to see if the problem is persistent there, which would mean a definite hardware problem.
I have not changed monitors as there is no chance of me being able to do that. How would I test it with a Linux CD
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
Basically you download an ISO file, which is a 'image' of a CD. Using a tool like ImgBurn you burn the ISO to a DVD to create a useable disk. Put the disk in your PC and restart. Assuming your DVD drive is the first boot priority device (or greater than hdd, settings for this are in the BIOS) it will boot the Ubuntu installer where you can choose to install Ubuntu or try it (live). Choose live and Ubuntu will run from your ram / the disk. This allows you to test things out without making any changes to your system at all.
If you Google around there will be some good guides for that, it's a handy thing to know for when you have other problems. If you don't want to download Ubuntu there are smaller Linux distros that can be run off USB's.. Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux (dsl) and others.
I am going to hang around for a bit before I attempt that method. After all, it is Frictional Games Penumbra that managed to affect my pc, and I await solution from the developers before trying out anything else.
Well that's a good way to diagnose the problem without it, and good luck proving it was the game that damaged your PC somehow. Not to mention the eula probably covers it in the unlikely event something does happen. More like a coincidence that's when your GPU "broke".
Anyway until you try to help yourself by testing things out I don't see how we can help you figure out what the problem is.
I am fairly positive I could redo the crash and make the gamma carry over to my desktop again.
And I also do not understand how I would diagnose the PC using the Linux CD you described. What method would I use to diagnose it?
If the RGB colour tint shows up in another operating system, then it's your hardware that's buggered up. If it only does it in windows then it's probably a software problem with windows. Narrow it down.