Working in background cursor flutter

  • Thread starter Thread starter beetle
  • Start date Start date
B

beetle

Platform: ASUS M50-SV
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
Update status: No new updates available as of 2008-06-30

Cursor on desktop continually switches between Normal Select and Working in
Background when a manually initiated or task manager scheduled minimized
script is running. If the cursor is positioned over an item on the desktop,
the flashing stops.

The behaviour is an unnecessary visual distraction.

It can be reproduced on demand using the following milliwait.bat script
running minimized:

@echo off
:loop
milliwait 100
goto loop

where milliwait is as follows:

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdafx.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int APIENTRY WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,
HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
LPSTR lpCmdLine,
int nCmdShow)
{
int wait_time;
OutputDebugString ( lpCmdLine );
wait_time = atoi ( lpCmdLine );
Sleep ( wait_time );
return 0;
}
 
A simpler script (no program) that still demonstrates the problem is
icacls.bat run minimized:

@echo off
:loop
icacls c:\
goto loop
 
beetle said:
A simpler script (no program) that still demonstrates the problem is
icacls.bat run minimized:

@echo off
:loop
icacls c:\
goto loop
Click to expand...



One suggestion would be be to change your mouse cursor scheme. I use a
combination of the different sized aero arrows here for the different
working modes (small., mediium, large etc) for which the visual variation is
fairly minimal.
 
Jon said:
One suggestion would be be to change your mouse cursor scheme. I use a
combination of the different sized aero arrows here for the different
working modes (small., mediium, large etc) for which the visual variation is
fairly minimal.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input. I've tried them all and Hands 2 incorporates the
background timer into the pointer so that visual vibration is minimal. Is
this supposed to be a feature or is it a bug? Others in the ASUS community
have reported that it first started in vista SP1.
 
Sinner said:
Maybe it's just an ASUS phenomenon.
Click to expand...

A definite possibility...there was some mention of a graphics card driver
update with a modded .inf file...but I thought I would confirm that it wasn't
a more general vista issue before messing with the drivers.

(The Variations pointer scheme is even better than Hands 2 for a temporary
work-around.)
 
beetle said:
A simpler script (no program) that still demonstrates the problem is
icacls.bat run minimized:

@echo off
:loop
icacls c:\
goto loop
Click to expand...


I didn't see the symptom you describe.
When your script is run in a minimized window I see no impact at all.
 
Colon Terminus said:
I didn't see the symptom you describe.
When your script is run in a minimized window I see no impact at all.
Click to expand...

Updating the nVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS driver from V7.15.11.5680 (07-12-20)
to V7.15.11.6762 (08-02-28) available on support.asus.com did not resolve the
flutter problem. With the Dinosaur pointer scheme dino still does the
jitterbug...but I can live with Variations.
 
Colon Terminus said:
I didn't see the symptom you describe.
When your script is run in a minimized window I see no impact at all.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why but icacls.bat no longer produces output nor fails on my
system either. A script which is less sensitive to acl configuration and is
sure to produce output on all systems is help.bat:

@echo off
:loop
help
goto loop

If it is going to fail, it should be immediately obvious since the overhead
time for the dos help command is much reduced.
Click to expand...
 
beetle said:
I'm not sure why but icacls.bat no longer produces output nor fails on my
system either. A script which is less sensitive to acl configuration and
is
sure to produce output on all systems is help.bat:

@echo off
:loop
help
goto loop

If it is going to fail, it should be immediately obvious since the
overhead
time for the dos help command is much reduced.
Click to expand...


Once again, no problem at all here.

This is symptomatic of what is wrong with Vista; some users, me included,
find Vista to be an excellent O/S and prefer it while others with what
should be equivalent hardware find it virtually unusable.

Although I enjoy Vista, I'm certain there is something deep within the very
core of the Operating System that is fundamentally flawed. There is just way
too much anecdotal evidence to believe otherwise.
Click to expand...
 
:

Once again, no problem at all here.

This is symptomatic of what is wrong with Vista; some users, me included,
find Vista to be an excellent O/S and prefer it while others with what
should be equivalent hardware find it virtually unusable.

Although I enjoy Vista, I'm certain there is something deep within the very
core of the Operating System that is fundamentally flawed. There is just way
too much anecdotal evidence to believe otherwise.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to confirm that this is a
vista-to-hardware-specific issue. I agree that there are still too many
variables in vista to compare it yet to its more mature predecessor XP.
 
DOS-bitten: By a working_dir search rule a script called help.bat that
contains a reference to a help command simply reinvokes itself rather than
calling up the help command. This is why icacls.bat stopped generating output
when I renamed it to icacls.bat from test.bat.

The cursor flutter remains, however, if the scripts are called
icacls_script.bat and help_script.bat...
 
I have resolved this issue for the time being by attacking the "working in
background" animated cursor file with a cursor editor. For the "Windows Aero
(system scheme)" this file is c:\windows\cursors\aero_working.ani. After
creating a backup in aero_working.save.ani, pixelshop from digitope.com was
used to remove the circle from this item in the first frame and to set the
animation sequence to the first frame only.
 
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