Rockin' the new shit...
 

I won't go into too many details...I'll just say that if you decide to dust your own pc, you'd better be plenty careful if you're fucking about anyplace NEAR your chip.
I put it back in wrong, like...a TINY unnoticeable bit wrong, didn't bridge some gap completely or push it in all the way, something like that.
Anyway, everything gone. Even the memory and cpu.

Sooo...got a new one.
I didn't supervise the buy, so I ended up with the same tower (I have a nice soprano thermaltake) and power supply, both fairly new...the dvd drive was also salvagable. I have an external burner so it's all good.

So, this one's got 2 2 gig HDs, a motherboard that you can throw two seperate graphics cards into, onboard sound, extra ?RAM? a P4 3.1GIG processor (upgraded from 2.6) yknow, some other random shit that makes a pc work, and a graphics card called a 'GeForce 7300GS' I understand that one's quite ok, but I'm not sure...can anyone tell me what I'm dealing with here?

That's what I got.

There's a slight problem I just thought I'd run by you folks first.
The video files, eg - avi 'n stuff, they play fine through realplayer and wmp, but for some reason they look really DARK.
NB: The rest of the applications run at regular brightness, it's only a problem with the video files specifically. I have tried things I've played prior to the last pc dying, and they ran fine before, now they play dark too.
So, any ideas what I need to do here?

I'll think about it but the only thing I can think to ask is are your drivers and codecs up to date?

I think the codecs are ok...I mean beforehand, the videos wouldn't play but the sound on them would...so some guy at the shop fixed THAT...but now it's all dark when EVERY avi file plays.
I dunno bout the codec shit myself, wouldn't even know where to look.

Try reinstalling the videocard drivers.

Wouldn't they be new though?

They could be but if it's an older card there could be updates by now.

Just went through the system list, asking for updates on everything audio, video and processor related.
Apparently I've got the latest of everything.

So...the search continues.

Check the website for the company that makes the videocard, I did a few searches and asked a few people and they all said the same thing. The one person I know that had it happened said he re-installed the drivers and it fixed it. Just throwing it out there because I can't think of anything else lol. :)

This just in - GAMES run really dark too.
Same problem as the videos. They seem otherwise fine, but dark...I mean not so dark that I can't see anything, just darker than they ought to be by about 50-60%.

So...any further ideas, folks?

Check if your graphics card software drivers have some kind of video adjusting capabilities in em. If not, then I d recommend completely uninstalling the video drivers, then re-installing em from the CD. Give it a shot then.

If problem persists, go to the site and download the latest patches. I m guessing its a FX problem. (definitely card) Nothing so serious that a latest patch cant fix in a jiffy.