I was installing some updates today. Nothing really special: Office 2007 SP1 and three optional updates. I had everything shut down except for Windows Media Player since I was watching a DVD. Well, everything progressed smoothly until it got to the very end. After all four updates were installed, the video driver reset and the screen flashed. Playback of the movie stopped and I received a copy protection error saying something about updating my driver. Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen that before. But after I pressed “OK” something else changed:

My main monitor went black and white and remained so through out the whole shutdown process. So I’m thinking to myself that something in the install tripped the copy protection module of Vista. Ok, so a restart should do it…

Uh oh. I’m screwed. If a restart (and even a subsequent complete shutdown) doesn’t work, what am I to do? So I figure I’ll log in anyway just for kicks. It stays black and white. No change. But then about 10 seconds after the login succeeds, the main monitor goes back to displaying color.

I’m not really complaining here. This is probably how it’s supposed to work. And I have color again, so no harm, no foul, right? It just would have been nice to have some indication (probably in a toolbar balloon or popup dialog) of what happened and how to fix it. Otherwise every other user out there that this happens to will probably do the same thing I just did: Sit there and wonder “Ok, what now?”