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

[Jeremy Nicoll - ml virtualacorn]

Roger Darlington <rogerarm at freeuk.com> wrote:
 
> Well, whatever it was, it popped up automatically as a download to 
> install. I did not instigate any search for the download. Would it 
> offer beta versions for update automatically? How strange if it would.

What do you mean it "popped up"?  Were you at an nVidia website at the time?
 Had you followed links for your sort of graphics card?

I've got two nVidia graphics adaptors in one of my machines and I have NEVER
had anything offering a driver download (or any other info) pop up.  I've
not even had anything unexpected happen when I have visited the nVidia
support website.

nVidia's software does come with a lot of bells and whistles - for example
for multi-screen operation and virtual desktop operation (which with
multiple screens is less useful than if I only had one screen).  It has
oodles of configuration options.  Their website even provides videos you can
download to demonstrate some of these features. 

One of the things the cards can do is vary the degree of transparency of
certain windows on screen - see the "windows effects" options in nView.  Of
course this is quite common in applications these days, but remember nView
is allowing one to configure control by the graphics hardware.

It does occur to me that some of what you describe might be an effect of
window transparency, if the adaptor thinks you're changing focus from one
window to another.

Running VRPC full-screen is, as someone else said, somewhat like running a
game full-screen.  I'm not a gamer and haven't read any of the game-related
parts of the manuals.  

Possibly you should look at nVidia forums to see if you can find any
problems with the releases of their drivers that you have, compared with
whatever is newest.  

Their manuals - both for the graphics cards, and the nView software - are
large and thorough documents.  You may need to at least skim read them.



I installed new drivers for the two nVidia cards I had because I wanted to
have software control over rotation of images on each screen in my
multi-screen layout.  The machine had an AGP graphics card (which was state
of art when it was new) and a much lower spec PCI card.  To get software
control over these I needed to have each card use the same drivers.  

The nVidia doc for installing new drivers said basically to use Control
Panel's Add/Remove Programs thing to get rid of the old set, then reboot,
then install (and that also needed a reboot).  I was a bit nervous about
what level of screen support there'd be in the midst of this, but it went
ok. My machine's BIOS does have an option to say which graphics card is used
for BIOS display etc - I chose the AGP card for that.  After uninstalling
old drivers and rebooting, displays still worked, but at lower resolutions
than normal, being driven by default VGA capability I guess.  During install
of new drivers there were moments when displays were blanked, which I guess
is not surprising. 


-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.