Parallels Explorer Hung (5120), messed up MacOS colors

Yesterday I was attempting to mount (via Parallels Explorer) a Parallels disk that existed on an external USB drive.

My entire system hung up and forced me to reboot.

Upon reboot, my colors were messed up - it appears that it messed with transparency or the mix of colors.... things were "washed out" Grays either became White or Black.

I cleared PRAM multiple times prior to getting the tool kit out and opening up the laptop.

Tried taking my 30" monitor off of it and using the laptop LCD... same problem.

Nothing was fixing the problem..... and I have had Parallels (5120) installed and using it successfully since it came out.

Reading through some Parallels forums, I still thought it might have something to do with Parallels...

so I installed (5160) - but it didn't correct the problem.

So I created a new account on Mac OSX and logged into it.... Voila - color problem was gone.

So I logged back into my regular account and uninstalled Parallels, cleared PRAM and rebooted.... still had the problem.

Still playing around, I put the computer to sleep to hook it back up to my 30" display.... when it woke up, the color problem was GONE !

Update:

I had reinstalled Parallels after the problem fixed (I need limited access to windows for my job) and had no problems for the remainder of the day......

However, my laptop is scheduled to bootup at 7 everyday... and when I went and sat down at it, the color problem was back (or still there).

So I started to play around... and found out that the messed up color ONLY affects the one account (happens to be the account with Parallels).... AND it only affects the primary monitor at startup.

So I started searching the internet, looking at the boot and login sequence, preferences, launchd and anything else I could think of... and finally found something on an internet forum which several possible fixes to similar problems. None of the fixes seemed to work .... except for one forum response.....

If all else fails, go into 'System Preferences -> Universal Access' and make sure, under 'Display:', that the 'Enhance contrast:' slider is ALL the way to the LEFT. When I got into it, the slider was in the middle... so I slid it all the way to the left and my problem has been fixed since.

Okay... now who is the culprit ? I have never messed with the Universal Access pref pane... so I know it wasnt me... and its odd that it happened when the only thing I had up was Parallels Explorer.....

But why would anything in Parallels be using or messing with Display Contrast ?

I hope this helps someone else... and if it is a Parallels problem that they fix it - because this drove me nuts.....