Can't stop MA 2.01 from flickering
 

My Marine Aquarium v2.01 flickers every 30 seconds or so, otherwise it works fine. I am using an ATI Radeon 9200SE video card on an Intel D865GBF PC with Windows XP Home SP2 (3.0ghz, 160gb HD, 1.0gb DDRAM). Screen resolution is 1024X768 32bit. My video drivers are up to date. I have tried rolling them back. The refresh rate is set to 62 next setting down is 58 - still flickers.
Is there something that I'm missing here?

Is there anything else running that could be making it take a slight hit every 30 seconds? Email, live updates for antivirus programs, anything like that?

Running the 'Search' function in WinXP seems to give this result as well as it refreshes it's results every now and again. Very annoying.

The only running processes are Seti/Boinc (Seti @ Home) and Incredimail.
Seti/Boinc runs silently and only accesses the internet when downloading/uploading data (approx every 3-4 hours).
The Incredimail client accesses the web every minute to check for mail (per my settings).
I'm wondering if the Service Pack 2 has any bearing on this as I don't recall any such problems with SP1.
Normally the only time the SSVR flickers is if my McAfee Viruscan is running.

Seti/Boinc as well as the Incredimail client may be taking away some CPU

I have twin processors so Seti/Boinc uses 50% of my total CPU. I used to run Seti Classic which used 100% of my total CPU and the SSVR worked fine even then.
Hmmmmmm - gremlins, gnomes, elves?????? LOL
No bugs in system either, I constantly check for those.
Oh - I forgot, I don't have a cat, so the fish aren't getting scared.......:p

Screen savers have about the lowest priority of anything as far as computers go. If you have something running in the background it can steal clock cycles very easily. Especially since you have something running that needs 50% to start with.

I guess I'll just have to put up with it then. Thanks for the help. But as I said, the old Seti client used 100% of my CPU 100% of the time and MA worked fine! Plus I have numerous ScrSVRS that are "busy" and they all work fine.

Peter -

Do you get the same 'hiccup' when you start the program manually? It has a slightly higher priority when run as a program instead of a screensaver.

I think it is better when I preview now that you say that. I just found this tool, assuming I find out how to use it (!) do you think it would be useful? See: http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/12/1/12-1-40.shtml

That tool didn't work at all. Problem persists. The Boinc client shouldn't interfere as it has a very low priority and works silently in the background. It hasn't affected any of my other ssvrs either. I'm wondering if this is an SP2 issue.

I did receive an interesting item from MSSupport because coincidentally their 3DWindows XP screensaver has ceased to function correctly. I wont post it here as it's 3 pages long, but it wasn't any help anyway.
:confused:

I have just installed XP2 and see the flickering on the MA2-MD at the bottom where the startmenu is at. Is this the flickering that you are getting?
If it is and I have duplicated the problem, there is a chance of fixing the it. I did noticed that pressing the "F" Key twice got rid of the flickering.

The letter F key? I'll try it. My flickering is the whole screen just flickers off and on for a split second every so often. Most other SSVRS work OK except the Microsoft 3D Windows XP one which refuses to work at all since I got SP2. MS are working on that.
It was mentioned earlier that SSVRS get a low priority in the scheme of things, I wonder if there's a way of giving them a higher one?

I just turned off my firewall because it was interfering with my local network setup. Until I figure out how to use the firewall correctly and still have local file sharing working on my system, it will probably stay off.
Now I did test the MA2-MD again and the flickering was gone. Ex_Brit, can you test MA2 temporarily with the Firewall turned off and let me know if the flickering is still there?

I don't use Windows Firewall. I turned off my McAfee Firewall Plus for 2 minutes (didn't dare do longer as I'm on an "always on" cable connection) and it flickered once during that period.

Well folks, I want to thank you for your help and suggestions. It turned out that although I thought my video drivers were up to date, they weren't. The MA appears to be working perfectly now.
:cheers:

That is excellent news.

O.K! Now how about a whole school of neon tetras?? Just kidding:p