Taskbar flicker when set on "autohide"

[Teeb]

I'm fairly new to Vista and have noticed that when I have the taskbar set to
"autohide", it's hidden OK but every 10 seconds or so a ghost of the bar
flickers at the bottom of the screen. It's so quick you can barely see it but
it's there.

At the same time, the cursor goes to "busy" mode for a split second. (When I
make the taskbar visable again, there's no ghost but the cursor still goes to
busy periodically.)

I Googled the problem and found quite a few comments from others having the
same problem, but no solutions.

Any ideas???

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

I'm fairly new to Vista and have noticed that when I have the taskbar set to
"autohide", it's hidden OK but every 10 seconds or so a ghost of the bar
flickers at the bottom of the screen. It's so quick you can barely see it but
it's there.

At the same time, the cursor goes to "busy" mode for a split second. (When I
make the taskbar visable again, there's no ghost but the cursor still goes to
busy periodically.)

I Googled the problem and found quite a few comments from others having the
same problem, but no solutions.

Any ideas???

Not a total solution, but it does seem to reduce the issue if you turn
on the network icon in the taskbar:
Right-click the taskbar and select properties.
Go to the Notification Area tab.
Put a check on 'Network'.
Apply and/or OK the changes.
Reboot.

I find it somewhat annoying. I have tried different mice and drivers,
thinking something was triggering that, but no effect.

You can disable Aero glass to fix it, but then you lose the Vista look.

I currently have the release nVidia drivers. I havent' tried updating
that, although I'm not really certain it's the cause.

 

[Teeb]

Appreciate the response - the more people who have it (and notice it) the
more likely MS will do something about it.

Unfortunately, I already have the network icon enabled so I guess I'm at
best possible condition already (unless I disable Aero, which is always
possible once the "cool" factor wears off.)

Was interested in your search for possible things triggering it. I tried
opening the Task Manager and watching for processes to show a blip when the
cursor does its little "busy" thing, but haven't been able to correlate
anything. Oh well...

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

Was interested in your search for possible things triggering it. I tried
opening the Task Manager and watching for processes to show a blip when the
cursor does its little "busy" thing, but haven't been able to correlate
anything. Oh well...

I haven't found a source either. I've seen it flicker after the desktop
is displayed after logging in, but I'm not even touching the mouse. I
tried turning on other taskbar icons, but they didn't seem to have an
effect. For now, I have my taskbar set to only 1 row high to keep it as
minimally annoying as possible.

I just got this computer in September. I'm not quite certain when I
first noticed it. I still sort-of think it might have been when I
updated the Intel Matrix storage drivers, as the stock ones were causing
an occasional 30-60 second freeze (a known bug.) Starting the Intel
Matrix Storage Console does seem to reliably cause the flicker a few
times.

From what I can tell, this bug has been there since Vista's release, or
maybe even earlier. All we can do is try to list some of the hardware:
nVidia 8600GTS, Forceware 163.69
Intel Matrix Storage 7.6

 

[Teeb]

:

I just got this computer in September. I'm not quite certain when I
first noticed it. I still sort-of think it might have been when I
updated the Intel Matrix storage drivers, as the stock ones were causing
an occasional 30-60 second freeze (a known bug.) Starting the Intel
Matrix Storage Console does seem to reliably cause the flicker a few
times.

From what I can tell, this bug has been there since Vista's release, or
maybe even earlier. All we can do is try to list some of the hardware:
nVidia 8600GTS, Forceware 163.69
Intel Matrix Storage 7.6

Here's something new and I found it accidentally. I was noodling around in
Windows Media Player, jumping quickly through my music files, changing, etc,
and apparently got ahead of it because I got an error message telling me that
something called "PCM Media Sharing" had stopped working. I clicked OK on the
box and continued noodling with the music and nothing seemed
different...except the other problem had gone away. No taskbar flicker, no
periodic blip of the cursor busy sign.

To test it, I restarted the computer and the problem was back -- so I opened
task manager and found a resident program called "PCMMediaSharing.exe". I
ended it using task manager, and the taskbar flicker problem went away again.

So the obvious question is what is PCMMediaSharing and do I need it? Haven't
been able to find much about it, but it seems to be part of my computer's
resident suite of media stuff, judging by the files location.

I have a new Acer Aspire AM3100-U3201A. Do you by chance have an Acer???

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

Here's something new and I found it accidentally. I was noodling around in
Windows Media Player, jumping quickly through my music files, changing, etc,
and apparently got ahead of it because I got an error message telling me that
something called "PCM Media Sharing" had stopped working. I clicked OK on the
box and continued noodling with the music and nothing seemed
different...except the other problem had gone away. No taskbar flicker, no
periodic blip of the cursor busy sign.

To test it, I restarted the computer and the problem was back -- so I opened
task manager and found a resident program called "PCMMediaSharing.exe". I
ended it using task manager, and the taskbar flicker problem went away again.

So the obvious question is what is PCMMediaSharing and do I need it? Haven't
been able to find much about it, but it seems to be part of my computer's
resident suite of media stuff, judging by the files location.

I have a new Acer Aspire AM3100-U3201A. Do you by chance have an Acer???

This is a Dell. I don't have PCMMediaSharing.exe.

 

[Teeb]

:

This is a Dell. I don't have PCMMediaSharing.exe.

Hmmm, that's baffling because it's definitely triggering the problem with my
Acer -- I've tested it a couple of times and there's no doubt. Apparently the
potential for the problem is present in Vista, but is triggered differently
in different systems. It seems to happen when a resident program periodically
activates and tries to do something, either an update or some kind of search
or "ping".

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

Hmmm, that's baffling because it's definitely triggering the problem with my
Acer -- I've tested it a couple of times and there's no doubt. Apparently the
potential for the problem is present in Vista, but is triggered differently
in different systems. It seems to happen when a resident program periodically
activates and tries to do something, either an update or some kind of search
or "ping".

Yesterday, I did a check and noticed that Intel has updated the Intel
Matrix Storage drivers to 7.8 (I had 7.6). I updated them, and now the
flicker seems to be gone.

 

[AnotherMindbomb]

Yesterday, I did a check and noticed that Intel has updated the Intel
Matrix Storage drivers to 7.8 (I had 7.6). I updated them, and now the
flicker seems to be gone.

Aha! this flickering has been driving me nuts since I took delivery of this
new machine. Dell here, with version 7.6 of the raid drivers. I've just
upgraded to 7.8 after seeing this post..

So far it's been about 3 minutes and no flickering.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

Aha! this flickering has been driving me nuts since I took delivery of this
new machine. Dell here, with version 7.6 of the raid drivers. I've just
upgraded to 7.8 after seeing this post..

So far it's been about 3 minutes and no flickering.

It's not a 100% fix, but it happens MUCH less often. Maybe every few
minutes or so.

 

[AnotherMindbomb]

It's not a 100% fix, but it happens MUCH less often. Maybe every few
minutes or so.

I used the machine for about 3 hours last night after applying the 7.8
release. I can't say I've noticed any more flickering at all. If it hasn't
worked 100% here, it's made an enormous difference as I /was/ getting the
flickering roughly every 15 seconds or thereabouts and now it's so infrequent
I don't actually see it.

If it makes any difference, I have the following in my system tray:

Comodo firewall Pro
Skype
AVG Free
GoogleDesktop
LogMeIn
LCDGamma (used by Syncmaster 226BW monitor)
Safely Remove Hardware.