No video

i believe i have the STRANGEST problem…
–and i sure hope someone could help.

My prob is that my videos do NOT appear when i play them in ANY player – only a brown patch is where the video shld be.
BUT when i press CTRL-ALT-DEL and then ESC the task manager, the video appears.
Games are affected by this too and i had reformatted pc b4 but it only helps for a while and prob suddenly happens again.

i am using P3-550 w 128mb and win2000.
any comments will be appreciated, thkx.

sounds like it is a software issue. check to make sure you have the most recent drivers for your card (check card mfgr first, then chip mfgr), make sure the program you are running has had the most recent patch applied, make sure win2000 has been updated.
those are good starting points, but with the information provided it could be a software conflict between the video viewer you are using and some other one that will not allow the program you use to display.

In case you have a TV Tuner card or a separate DVD decoder card,the video is being played as an overlay and the video is being sent to that card or the display of the other card is on top of the current video display

at last i found the prob…

It IS a software prob and also due to the video drivers, but…the twist is this : THE prob is the updated drivers!!!

i am using an Nvidia Riva TNT2 card.
aft installing ANY version of Detonator drivers from Nvidia website, this prob occurs.
i remv and reinst the video adaptor w generic drivers from the Win2k cd and now prob is solved.
Weird…