Well I'm still using the 4.1 Catalyst drivers because the new ones seem to give me a random roll between regular and extremely dark gamma. I said random because sometimes when I join a server it chooses to be dark and sometime it chooses to be normal. I don't know how to fix this or if a configuration in my configuration file is doing this.

Radeon 9600 128mb
P4 2.533 Ghz
512 Mb Ram

I updated just now to Catalyst Drivers 4.5 and now the darkness doesn't vary anymore, just stays darker then usual. Could any one of these configurations have something to do with it?

rate "30000"
_snd_mixahead "0.1"
ati_npatch "1.0"
ati_subdiv "2.0"
bgmvolume "0.000000"
bottomcolor "6"
brightness ".500000"
cl_rate "4000"
cl_updaterate "35"
cl_allowdownload "1"
cl_allowupload "1"
cl_autohelp "0"
cl_buildmessages "1"
cl_centerentityid "0"
cl_cmdbackup "2"
cl_cmdrate "40"
cl_cmhotkeys "qwerasdfzxcv"
cl_dlmax "128"
cl_download_ingame "1"
cl_dynamiclights "1"
cl_forcedefaultfov "0"
cl_highdetail "1"
cl_himodels "0"
cl_idealpitchscale "0.8"
cl_logocolor "#Valve_Blue"
cl_logofile "tiki"
cl_lc "1"
cl_lw "1"
cl_musicdelay "90.000000"
cl_musicdirectory ""
cl_musicenabled "0"
cl_musicvolume "0"
cl_particleinfo "0"
cl_quickselecttime "0.500000"
cl_timeout "999999"
cl_updaterate "20"
cl_vsmoothing "0.05"
con_color "255 155 50"
console "1.0"
crosshair "1.000000"
fps_max "100"
fps_modem "0.0"
gamma "2.500000"
gl_cull 1
gl_clear 1
gl_keeptjunctions 1
gl_texsort 1
gl_overbright 1
gl_wateramp 1
gl_ztrick 0
gl_dither 0
gl_smoothmodels 1
gl_spriteblend 1
gl_lightholes 1
gl_monolights 0
gl_round_down 0
gl_picmip 0
gl_playermip 0
gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR
gl_max_size 1024
gl_dither "1"
gl_flipmatrix "0"
gl_monolights "0"
gl_overbright "0.000000"
gl_polyoffset "4"

A little help here?

You may want to try this site if you have not so already.

http://www.ati.com/support/issuetype/games.html

I have a gamma set to 3, and brigtness to 5. I don't think that these values are too high to ruin the atmosphere of NS, and there are still a few dark corners. You can try changing your settings to mine, and see if it helps.

Then when the randomness decides to switch to regular, it will be to bright. Also that link didn't help but thanks for your effort guys.

Search for older drivers and see if that helps.

I had this problem when I had NetMeeting running in the background.

Close msn, netmeeting, appsharing, etc, then retry.

Well, it's worth a shot.