Zapped PRAM, now no gray screen

I'm running OS X 10.6.3 on a late 2009, 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 4 GB of RAM.
This one is actually fairly self-explanatory and the cause is easily identified: hoping to fix some other technical difficulties I was having, I zapped my PRAM through the standard 'Command + Option + P + R' method and now whenever I boot up, I don't get the standard gray screen telling me how things are going -- even when holding down option. Instead, everything is pitch black until OS X fully loads and I get a flash of blue. Even when holding Option to bring up the list of boot disks, I'm staring at a screen as black as midnight (despite the computer otherwise responding correctly) until I press enter and blindly tell it to boot Macintosh HD.
I would be grateful for any assistance.

This problem still exists! Zapping PRAM this way and that way change nothing, I'm still getting black screens instead of gray as I'm booting up, until things are fully booted. It's as though the default monitor settings have been screwed up and are only becoming fixed when it boots up enough to check what my desktop actually wants.
So this is some sort o' bump.

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