I'm not clear from your posts if you fixed this problem, but I had either the same problem or a similar one recently. I called Melco about something else and asked about this too. They said it was a problem and that there was an upgrade to the software to fix it, so new they sent it to me on a disk (or they couldn't make it work to just upload to your machine or whatever). They sent it and voila, no more thousands of color changes, from blue to whatever. I have DS 9, the update included the OS (9) and made it run more smoothly too. So after having the tech out yesterday, I'm pretty much down to ONLY operator error for any last thing that goes wrong! Rod, thanks so much for trying to help me troubleshoot what was wrong. it turned out that when I hit the edge of the hoop, it pushed the presser foot up extremely high, which I could not have fixed on my own anyway. I also learned a bunch of great information about what I was doing wrong, how to fix it, and how to do maintenance more efficiently and when I should actually be doing certain things. I always like to know why something is a certain way, not just what to do. Carol Brussel freezing Denver