has no one experienced this?

  • Thread starter Thread starter flintridgeparkenfarker vonkerschnauzerheiden
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flintridgeparkenfarker vonkerschnauzerheiden

Scrolling does not slide the entire contents of a document, but rather moves
the contents in "waves" as the window is constantly refreshing.

Could someone at least tell me if this is common XP behavior? Or could it be
a compatibility issue between XP and MSI GeForce FX5200 graphics card?

It's driving me nuts. All this RAM and processing speed and the thing runs
like dooky.
 
I get this problem (different GFX card), when I am manipulating
photographs - it happens basically when they PC is out of RAM...

If the hard disk is thrashing at the same time as the window updates slowly
+ in chunks, then your PC has run out of RAM and is using the windows swap
file in place of normal memory...

Have you lots of other application open in the background?
You might have just one or 2 applications open in the background, but maybe
they use alot of memory?

Use the task manager (CTRL + Shift + Esc) and monitor the performance tab -
is the memory usage (bottom of screen) higher than the amount of RAM in the
PC?
 
Gareth Tuckwell said:
I get this problem (different GFX card), when I am manipulating
photographs - it happens basically when they PC is out of RAM...

If the hard disk is thrashing at the same time as the window updates slowly
+ in chunks, then your PC has run out of RAM and is using the windows swap
file in place of normal memory...

Have you lots of other application open in the background?
You might have just one or 2 applications open in the background, but maybe
they use alot of memory?

I use this computer the same as when I ran Win95, with 64MB RAM and never
experienced slow/labored scrolling. Now I have 1GB RAM and a 233MHz FSB and
the task manager shows no usage of the page file, even when I open 3 times
the number of apps I would normally run. I don't work w/resource gobbling
stuff like heavy graphics, sound, etc.. I can have an 8KB Notepad file open
by itself and the scrolling behavior will be the same as if I have 10 or 15
apps like Excel, development environments, command window, etc. open.

It seems like either the behavior is an idiosyncracy of XP or there is a
setting somewhere I'm not familiar with that could have an affect. I did
notice however that when I scroll a document the CPU usage goes up to 100%
and that doesn't seem right. Even with only a couple apps open the CPU still
uses 100% capacity when I scroll a document. Does that sound common to you,
or did I end up with a bum processor?
 
Maybe your video card is not set correctly, or simply not adequate. Is your
video built into the motherboard? If so, how much memory is allocated to it
in your BIOS? If not, how much memory is on your video card?

On the other hand, maybe your CPU is not up to the task. What is its speed?

As for it being a peculiarity of Windows XP, I don't think so. I have XP on
2 desktops and 1 laptop, and none of them exhibit the behavior you
described.
 
If you are not doing anything memory intensive then anything more than about
256MB RAM is not necessary, so you have plenty of that.. It sounds like
exactly what 'Papa' has suggested - either your graphics card can't copy or
your processor is struggling. However...

You have a fairly recent graphics card and a 233FSB would suggest a recent
processor so it must be software.

Make sure you scan for the latest viruses and sweep away all your spyware -
all could be eating resources. Then get yourself onto the website for your
graphics card - could be that you are using an old, or even the wrong
driver. If the GFX card is build into the motherboard, then get the driver
from your motherboard manufacturer, or just get the correct driver from the
manufacturer of the chipset (MSI GeForce).

If the GFX driver is not working properly (or at all) for the GFX card, then
the processor will be stepping in and doing all the work, which would
naturally cause it to spike and struggle in performance.

You could always get hold of an evaluation copy of SiSoft Sandra and run
some of the reports - it might detect the problem.
 
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