Most electronic equipment come with a built-in service menu which is used to diagnose and troubleshoot the device when problems occur. In some cases, the service menu is used to turn on/off features of the hardware in different models of the device. After countless rounds of remote button mashing I have found the service menu of the living room television set which has extra options to setup sound reception, colour systems etc ...
On my old desktop PC, the 17" CRT monitor had a pretty tricky way of getting into the service menu. It would only work when the monitor was in standby mode (which I forced by setting XP screensaver options to turn off the monitor after 1 minute of inactivity). Once in standby, I had to hold the CONTRAST increase button and then wake the monitor up by moving the mouse. This would reveal the hidden service menu which included options to refocus the screen and control the contrast and brightness boost settings.
In my current Dell 19" LCD monitor, it took about 3 minutes of fiddling and reading about other models here. Turns out, in this model, to get to the service menu you have to press and hold the [MENU] and [+] buttons down (second and fourth) and then turn on the monitor. You will know that the hidden menu is active when you display the main menu - two additional codes are displayed in yellow on the menu titlebar (as shown in screenshot above)
To get to the hidden menu, proceed to the factory reset option at the bottom and select 'Factory' at the next menu. A new window will display available hidden settings which include the colour values for the current preset modes displayed on the monitor. Still trying to figure out the other settings though.
UPDATE : Method added onto wiki page 22nd June 2008
DISCLAIMER : Any attempts of this hack is at your own risk and I do not take any responsibility. Attempts at changing hardware settings are not approved and may void your warranty if not done properly. All trademarks, tradenames and program names are property of their individual owners.
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