[Virtualacorn-list] Windows panes flashing under dead full-screen RO

[Chris Hughes]

In message <5c2a0d7851.rogerarm at rogerarm.freeuk.com>
          Roger Darlington <rogerarm at freeuk.com> wrote:

> On 18 Nov 2010, David Pitt  wrote:
>> Roger Darlington <rogerarm at freeuk.com> wrote:

>>> On 16 Nov 2010, Jeremy Nicoll - ml virtualacorn  wrote:

>> [snip]

>>>> Indeed.  It worries me that Roger is having so many problems that others
>>>> don't see.  Why?
>>> 
>>> I'm a RO power user that doesn't really know how to work windows :-)

>> VRPC should not require in depth expertise in the host but Windows does need
>> to be kept safe.

>>> Does that mean that no one has ever seen the condition I described (way
>>> above) where the RO window is just a ghost temporarily hiding all the
>>> active Windows things underneath it until a mouse button is pressed when
>>> the active windows underneath are very very briefly (about 1 scan-frame
>>> period) visible? If so, I am surprised.

>> I have not seen Roger's manifestation but it comes as no great surprise
>> that there are problems. I have seen VRPC destroyed by PC activity, with
>> Vista particularly. I had believed that Window 7 resolved that but now I
>> have my doubts.

> Interesting.

>> NVidia graphics seems to be a hazard.

> Now that is something I do have: an Nvidea GeForce 260 shoe-box inside
> the i7 computer case which is used to full (RO) capacity: 16MB VRAM.
> That is 2560x1600 x 16M colours.

Have you installed the latest nVidea drivers they come out about every 
three months.

> I wonder if the ghosting is anything to do with that? RO might have
> totally crashed and exitted, but the graphics card has kept the RO
> screen image in its memory and only shows the Windows7 windows when a
> mouse button is pressed?

> Could this be what is really happening?

No idea without see the computer.

> Of course, that doesn't mean that the RO emulator gets off lightly; it
> has crashed irretrievably.

You mean Windows has crashed the program.

>> This morning I was using VRPC on Windows 7 in full screen mode when it
>> suddenly collapsed out of full screen mode to a black screen within a
>> Windows window. It did this twice. I saw no sign of anything unexpected
>> within Windows, the harddisc was doing something but I did not manage to
>> work out what that was. Two Alt-Enters got VRPC back. And then it did it
>> again. No big deal perhaps but it does add to my view that VRPC does not
>> always sit comfortably on its host.

> Something similar has occurred on more than 4 occasions here: the RO
> window (originally full-screen) becomes a much smaller and blank
> (white) windows7 window in Windows7 desktop. This too takes TWO
> ALT-ENTERs to recover from. The first ALT-ENTER gives a larger (and
> normal - i'e. it has RO stuff inside it) RO window within the windows7
> desktop.

> The second ALT-ENTER puts the RO window full-screen. This is as
> described in my earlier posting under subject heading 'RO's
> full-screen window reduced to blank when iPhone inserted'.

How about trying to download and install the latest nVidea Video 
drivers and see if that improves things.

>> I am minded to move that copy of VRPC to another PC. A second copy of VRPC
>> on another laptop has been OK so far but it has not been used much.

> Somethings flakey somewhere.

A number of suggestions have been made by me and others to help you 
have you done any of them yet?


-- 
Chris Hughes