color distortion

hi, i'm having some problems with certain icons and other things having their color distorted. it seems to have started happening the past two days, and it seems to happen frequently whenever my laptop is left on too long. the problem goes away whenever i reboot, but comes back again after the laptop has been on for a long while.

anyone have any idea as to the cause? help please. thanks in advance

i'm running an alienware 5500m mobile computer with winxp home edition and sp2 preinstalled. i have a pentium 4 with 3.00ghz and 1.00gb of ram.

here are some pics of what i mean by color distortion.

 

Did you try going to the alienware website for updates and microsoft as well most of the time all problems are covered up with updates and descriptions of these updates illistrate what they were released for hope it all works out.