Windlight lighting crazies...avatar always in shadow

I understand that facelights do not work in Windlight. My avatar's face always has shadows. Sometimes it's too dark to even see her clearly even at the midday setting. I went through the process outlined in a notecard someone wrote up for ideal lighting settings for avatar appearance. I logged off, and when I logged back on later the avatar was back in shadow, even though the settings were saved and I set it to midday. Should I go back to the original SL viewer? I don't have the time to constantly fuss with the lighting.

You can use WindLight presets you make or someone else has made - there are lots out there. Once you install them they will be in your preset list. You can just set your WL preset when you log in (you'll find lots of great ones and changing to the one that suits your mood and suits the place around you is fun).

Google " Windlight presets" and you'll find lots.
The wiki page is here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Windlight

Facelights DO work in windlight, just not as brightly as they did before windlight.

You can change the gamma brightness of SL under the Graphics-Hardware Options, but you have to have "Anti Aliasing Gamma Correction" enabled in your video cards control panel or else that option won't be UNgreyed for you.

The only time I see shadows on my face using the latest's version of Cool Viewer is at sunrise and midnight. But I've noticed that I have to turn down lighting on masking effects to darken the face when I make a skin now for some reason. Could be the settings I'm using or windlight. However two people I know who use my skins don’t use Cool Viewer but use the standard RC instead and they also say the face looks better when made darker. So I’m at a loss as to why this is but for some reason it seems true for most if not all viewers.