Advanced graphics might be the cause...
While I was at Scaling New Heights last week a few ProAdvisors approached me asking if I had seen a specific problem they had encountered with some of their clients. Specifically these clients were on occasion experiencing a change in the user interface graphics in which QuickBooks 2014 (or Enterprise 14) would suddenly change the appearance of ‘registers’ (like a check register) so that in normal 2-line register mode (as opposed to 1-line mode), the white lines of the register would turn black thus preventing users from reading the information recorded in those fields. In a few cases the ‘colored’ lines within the register may also change colors from either the default coloration, or the custom coloration set by ‘Change Account Color’ under the Edit menu.
Recently one of my own clients experienced this exact same thing. After spending hours working with drivers for the displays and graphic cards, as well as configurations within the display and personalization settings of Windows 7 Professional, my brother (who is my Microsoft network engineer and the ‘go to IT-guy’ of my business) made one simple change that made the difference. He finally unplugged the client’s monitor from the NVIDIA® ‘advanced graphics’ card and plugged it into the on-board integrated graphics on the client’s Dell Precision workstation and ‘voila’ the problem was solved. In the two weeks since the client has NOT had a single repeat occurrence of ‘white goes black’ register color alteration.
While I can not (and will not) say for certain that the NVIDIA® graphics card was the (exclusive) cause of this problem for 'my client', I will say that it is 'among the suspects'. Because ‘advanced graphic’ cards of this type are becoming a common option for many customized (and even standard configuration) computers since they support multiple monitors, this is a relatively minor situation that is worth bringing to your attention.
In this specific case the client’s computer was a T1700 series Dell Precision workstation running Windows 7 Professional and equipped with an NVDIA® Quadro® NVS (512MB) 310 (2DP-DVI adapters) card. At first I thought to myself this might have been some ‘flaw’ in the card of this particular client; perhaps a bad solder or a microscopic crack in the card itself, or even a flawed component; but when I start hearing that other ProAdvisors are seeing the same thing with their clients, then that leads me to believe that either advanced graphic cards and QuickBooks don’t play well together in combination with Windows 7 Professional. or maybe it could be some odd combination of factors including the actual ‘monitor’ as well as these other 3 players.
So if you, or your clients, experience any similar occurrences, and you are running an ‘advanced graphics’ card such as NVDIA® Quadro® NVS (or any NVDIA®, for that matter) graphics you might try using the on-(mother)-board graphics to see if it resolves your problem. If it does, great, I would like to hear back from you in the comments section below. If it does not solve the problem, then I would like to hear from that as well.
Further if you have clients experiencing the same thing, using either a different ‘advanced graphics’ card or even on-board graphics, let me know as well via the comments section. It will only be with help from you that we can garner enough information to actually track down the real culprit(s).