Dsplay acting strange - everything "peels down" when exiting

[brassplyer]

I've recently noticed things looking "funny" - when I exit or minimize
an app or folder, instead of just doing away, there's an obvious "peel
down" as if the screen contents are being rapidly erased from the top
down.

I've tried reinstalling the video card drivers - NVidia GE Force
FX5200. No difference. Never did this before.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[brassplyer]

Should have specified I'm running XP SP2 Media Center.

 

[M.I.5¾]

I've recently noticed things looking "funny" - when I exit or minimize
an app or folder, instead of just doing away, there's an obvious "peel
down" as if the screen contents are being rapidly erased from the top
down.

I've tried reinstalling the video card drivers - NVidia GE Force
FX5200. No difference. Never did this before.

That's actually how windows erases a window from your display. Bit it
normally happens so fast that you don't see it happening. In your case it
sounds as though Windows is using a generic video driver to drive you
graphics that is unable to utilise the accelerator features of you card.
Have a look in device manager and check that the correct drivers are
actually being used.

 

[brassplyer]

Check  your "Visual effects" settings (AKA "Eye Candy" ) Tab  in  "System
Properties".

Custom: "Animate windows when minimizing" under
Performance (eating) options.

Nope, makes no difference.

 

[Peter]

I've recently noticed things looking "funny" - when I exit or minimize
an app or folder, instead of just doing away, there's an obvious "peel
down" as if the screen contents are being rapidly erased from the top
down.

I've tried reinstalling the video card drivers - NVidia GE Force
FX5200. No difference. Never did this before.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Sounds more like a system that's struggling to perform because of
overloaded background programs or not enough RAM.

 

[Rob]

Sounds more like a system that's struggling to perform because of
overloaded background programs or not enough RAM.

I agree. Process Explorer may help to see what's taking resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_Explorer

 

[Tzortzakakis Dimitrios]

I agree. Process Explorer may help to see what's taking resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_Explorer

And run msconfig to see how many programms run at startup of windows.

 

[brassplyer]

Sounds more like a system that's struggling to perform because of
overloaded background programs or not enough RAM.

I don't think that's it. P4 2.4 gig, 3 gigs ram. It never did this
before I did a recent re-install of XP MCE when it had a lot more apps
loaded than it does now. It didn't do it immediately after, I just
started noticing it.

There doesn't have to be anything going on. If I open any folder, or
app, it does it on closing or minimizing. Overall performance doesn't
seem to be impacted - can still do video work, play a/v files fine
etc., but it's annoying.

 

[Paul]

I don't think that's it. P4 2.4 gig, 3 gigs ram. It never did this
before I did a recent re-install of XP MCE when it had a lot more apps
loaded than it does now. It didn't do it immediately after, I just
started noticing it.

There doesn't have to be anything going on. If I open any folder, or
app, it does it on closing or minimizing. Overall performance doesn't
seem to be impacted - can still do video work, play a/v files fine
etc., but it's annoying.

Check Display control panel and the acceleration slider.

Control Panels : Display : Settings : Advanced : Troubleshooting

Check Device Manager, and see whether the chipset's interface to
video is running in the fastest mode possible. (On an AGP
system, this is AGP versus PCI, where PCI is slower. There
will be a "bridge" in Device Manager, that mentions AGP, if
it is set up properly.)

You can go to Start:Run and type in "dxdiag" and run the
DirectX diagnostic. Under "Display" there are some test
buttons. There are also some enable and disable buttons,
but you have to be a little careful with the interpretation
of them. On some older OSes, the buttons didn't seem to be
indicating correctly. So I always treat what they're saying,
with some suspicion.

I can think of three levels of communications, for moving
data around. For example, move a texture via AGP protocol
(2166MB/sec perhaps). Move a texture via PCI protocol
(a lower rate, but still pretty fast, maybe 266MB/sec?).
Those would involve mechanisms similar to DMA perhaps,
where Direct Memory Access is handled by a hardware engine
and can happen without processor interaction for each byte.

The third way to do things, is with the processor, transferring
words of data at a time, into the frame buffer. This can
occur at much lower rates, perhaps below 100MB/sec. Depending
on how many software routines are exited and entered, in the
processing of each line of a bitmap, the transfer can be
pretty slow. And that might show up as a slow painting or
removal of an image, from the screen.

The trick then, is determining whether the rendering path
has slipped into such a backup mode, and why.

Paul

 

[Peter]

And run msconfig to see how many programms run at startup of windows.

Better still, disable the whole let and see how things run. One other
thing I would check for are virii or spyware.