Flickering Hourglass - Help!

S

Steve Walker

Greetings -

Colleagues at work are recently experiencing a flickering effect on the
windows hourglass whilst accessing a networked Oracle database. Although
it's a tiny animation, it seems to catch their eye and causes great
annoyance.

Desktops are newish 256MB P4's, corporate HP-type stuff with o/b graphics.
Network is also new (100/1000mb capacity) with high-spec switches etc.
Server is also a beefy newish model, located approx 50 miles away (linked
over private WAN, high-speed optical backbone). Overall loading isn't
high, it's been built with future capacity for VOIP etc.

Flickering coincides with the delay in obtaining each screen update, so I'm
guessing it's signalling a network lag (ranges from 5secs to >1min per
change). We might not be able to make the network any faster, so I'm
wondering if it's possible to disable the flicker animation and just have
the static hourglass? That would be achievable within the XP (some W2K)
registry, wouldn't it...? please....?

Any suggestions really appreciated, these are decent hard-working folks and
it's driving them mad on a daily basis!

Thanks in advance!
 
S

Shenan Stanley

Steve said:
Colleagues at work are recently experiencing a flickering effect on
the windows hourglass whilst accessing a networked Oracle database.
Although it's a tiny animation, it seems to catch their eye and
causes great annoyance.

Desktops are newish 256MB P4's, corporate HP-type stuff with o/b
graphics. Network is also new (100/1000mb capacity) with high-spec
switches etc. Server is also a beefy newish model, located approx 50
miles away (linked over private WAN, high-speed optical backbone).
Overall loading isn't high, it's been built with future capacity for
VOIP etc.
Flickering coincides with the delay in obtaining each screen update,
so I'm guessing it's signalling a network lag (ranges from 5secs to
faster, so I'm wondering if it's possible to disable the flicker
animation and just have the static hourglass? That would be
achievable within the XP (some W2K) registry, wouldn't it...?
please....?
Any suggestions really appreciated, these are decent hard-working
folks and it's driving them mad on a daily basis!
Click to expand...

They can (always have been able to) do this themselves...

Control Panel --> Mouse --> Pointers tab..
Change the appropriate pointer animation to something static to see if that
actually helps.

--
=- Shenan -=<
=- MS MVP -=<
Click to expand...
--
The information above is intended to assist you; however, it is
suggested you research for yourself before you take any advice - you
are the one ultimately responsible for your actions/problems/solutions.
Whenever possible, the advice will include the method/places used in
compiling the answer. Also, questions may have been asked to clarify
your situation OR to give you an idea of where to look - do not dismiss
them lightly.
 
S

Steve Walker

Shenan said:
They can (always have been able to) do this themselves...

Control Panel --> Mouse --> Pointers tab..
Change the appropriate pointer animation to something static to
see if that actually helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks Shenan, for such a quick reply!

AFAIK, they're all using standard Windows Default pointers (corporate cloned
OS). This doesn't appear to have any intentional animation features, at
least it doesn't here on my XP pro desktop at home. I have already tried
changing one user to Standard Large and also to Inverted, but the flicker
behaviour persisted when loading data from the network. Also tried changes
to pointer precision & speed, no success.

Googling suggests this symptom is associated with system overload, and this
can be evidenced to some extent within the application. Lots of the
documents are templated Word files, and they take some processing to load.
I could believe that during flicker, the cpu is running flat out (but
haven't checked that yet).
 
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