Color Management: Vista won't hold a custom ICC profile

[globetrotter]

I have an HP Pavilion dv2000 laptop running Vista. I used a Spyer2Pro to
calibrate my monitor and use the accompanying ColorVision program to load the
resultant ICC custom profile as the default color profile via the Vista
startup routine. The profile loads fine, and the color switches to the
custom profile. After two or three minutes, however, the colors switch back
to the uncalibrated Vista default profile. Only a reboot will load the
custom profile again. Any ideas? HP was no help. Thanks in advance.

[Andrew McLaren]

This appears to be a common problem with Vista and ICCs - possibly a bug.
The ICC will load, but then the Gamma Look-Up Table will be reset following
a number of different actions. See for example:

As far as I know, there is no bug number and no hotfix yet. Note that it may
be highly dependent on your graphics card hardware and driver, as well as
the Windows-supplied colour profile functions (unconfirmed).

As suggested in the above blog, running the DisplayProfile utility may be a
workaround.

The Colour team at Microsoft have a blog site here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/color_blog/default.aspx. You may be able to contact
them directly to see if they know about the problem or the solution.

Good luck with it

[Jennifer-Botham]

You may not use original version of Window vista. Kindly use the Original Version.
Then you may not complex color combination.

[vinyldj]

I am having this problem too.

It would appear that SP2 doesn't want to read my icc profile, it
briefly loads at startup then switches back to a redish screen very
quickly. This problem started after I installed Vista SP2 and updated my
graphics drivers from Nvidia 178.15 to 185.85 (for a Geforce 9600GT). I
cannot be sure which is causing the problem. I did however have to
reload my saved icc profile into Color Management after the SP2
installed.

I am going to roll-back my graphics drivers to see if this helps.

I used an i1 calibrator to calibrate my monitor - comes with the
software Eye-One Match 3 which also installs a system startup item
called Calibration Loader 5.0.

[vinyldj]

ok an UPDATE to my post above. btw thanks Andrew for the thread link
regarding DisplayProfile - I have not tried it yet but may yet do so.

However, something bizarre is going on here - I turned off the
Calibration Loader startup item (which is installed along with Eye-One
Match) restarted and interestingly it would appear that the system is
now holding what looks to be my custom icc profile !? I checked some
numbers in photoshop and they are correct. I switched the Calibration
Loader startup item back on, restarted vista and the problem is back
hmm. So the Calibration Loader start up item that is meant to load my
custom calibration at startup is conflicting with the system? when
switched off vista appears to be handling my icc profile fine.

I going to test this further by creating a wacky icc profile - then
test with the Loader on and off just to be sure that Vista is handling
the profile when the Loader is switched off.

[RalfG]

Existing software might not be fully compatible with SP2 or specific
programs might require a reinstall due to file changes made by installing
SP2.

[dongiulio]

Hi,

I have same problem: I have created a custom calibration using my spyder 3. everything worked fine with my new calibration until I restarted my PC. Since then Vista 64 bit SP1 AllThePossibleUpdates simply doesn't keep the profile.

I tried with "display profile" and everytime I switch to my profile I see the new colors for less than a second and then everything gets back to the dumb version.

I have tried also to switch off the program from the spyder and the ATI driver, but I get exactly the same behavior.

I tried to install the update from windows update, but it says that I can't install that on my system.

Any new idea?

[bjphotodude]

Have checked Microsoft databases for this issue with no luck for at least a year now. Apparently, they won't acknowledge the problem. I am a Professional Photographer with a dozen machines running XP or Vista, all calibrated with Monaco Gamma. Have used this program for years and looked for updated Vista drivers, but it's too old for them to bother with, as they would rather sell me a new calibrator than update the drivers, which brings them no more money. However it does work in Vista just fine, except for the bug. No issues in XP.

Here's what I know-it's Vista switching to no profile when sidebar starts up. I've turned off sidebar for a while and the problem does not re-appear. From posts I've read, the problem also occurs when UAC boxes pop up. UAC is disabled on my Vista machines. Why these things cause your color display profile to be switched off is a mystery unless Microsoft addresses the issue. SP2 did not fix the issue. What a surprise. However, I like the sidebar, so here's what works for me, without new log-in or re-booting. Monaco, like many others, uses a startup program to turn on the the color profile, which runs before sidebar loads. Once sidebar is up, usually the last thing to load in Vista, the color profile switches from good to bad. I've copied the monacogamma.exe from the startup folder to my desktop. Then when I see the funky looking color, I just double-click my Monaco icon and all is fine. I keep almost all of my machines running all the time, so it's only on boot-up that this is an issue. If I could switch the order of startup items to run Monaco at the end of the start-up routine it would be a non-issue unless you have UAC on, which I can't understand why you would unless you have amateurs on your machines. Then, it's not a bad idea.

If anybody knows how to change the order of startup items, I would have no more problem. Could it be as easy as editing the registry? Haven't tried as my fix is quite simple.