Madness X 9

[Tea]

I'm having a few video problems, and I'm contemplating updating my Direct X to V 9. Am I crazy?

 

[Buck]

(You're an orangutan working on computers, what isn't crazy about that?)

I've been running DX9 without any issues when playing the only game I play, AOE.

 

[Tea]

Funny that .... AOE is the only game I play. (Though you are probably playing a later version. I own V2, but I don't like it. I only play AOE1.

But I better explain my problem and see if anyone can get a handle on it. Might be a long post.

 

[Tea]

No issues in AOE. Only in Mozilla, and then only when I have too many windows/tabs open, especially ones with lots of graphics. Then, Mozilla suddenly can't refresh the screen, except whern you scroll or move the mouse over things. Other programs continue on just fine. If I swap windows from Moz to (e.g.) Opera, Opera shows up OK, but switching back, Moz can't paint the screen out over the previous Opera screen except if the page is long enough for me to scroll it down and then back up. I can see the tabs if I swipe the mouse cursor over them, switch between them OK, and (so long as the pages are long enough) scroll each one up and down to make it refresh.

Close enough Moz windows/tabs and the problem goes away. Open up too many windows/tabs and it comes back again.

Sometimes (but not always) I used to be able to make the problem go away just by closing other stuff, such as PMView or IE or whatever. (I.e., use less RAM.)

Windows 2000 SP4, Athlon, VIA chipset, never crashes (I mean never!, runs 24/7.

 

[Tea]

Sounds like a classic video driver problem, right?

Nope. I was running a Matrox G450. Cracked the sads with it the other week and slipped in a 128MB Albatron Gforce 4Ti4280, latest Dets. Problem still here exactly the same, except that it happens faster now.

For entirely unrelated reasons, I recently also swapped:

Power supply
Case
SCSI card
SCSI cable
Optical drives
Motherboard
RAM
NIC
Sound card.

None of it made any difference.

A few months back I did a clean install - but I had the problem before and I still have it now.

I think it started around about the time I upgraded to Moz 1.4 or 1.5. Currently I'm running 1.6.

WTF do I try next?

 

[Buck]

My first guess (I've seen something similar with Windows XP) would be video card driver, then video card combined with Windows. Sorry I am not more specific, I'm sure you've already assumed the same scenario.

 

[Tea]

Oh, I also swapped out the CPU. An XP 3000+ that suddenly started throwing random errors after months of flawless operation was the problem that led to all that component swapping. No heating problems whatsoever - just started getting hangs twice a day and random GFPs, rapidly going from bad to worse, after the system had been rock-solid for months - stable enough to only bother rebooting once or twice a month, if that.

Once I had changed everything except the CPU and trsted with a spare, blank hard drive, and still got errors, I pulled out the 3000 and slipped in a 2500 I had spare. Instant fix. At that point I went back to my original hard drives.

Note that none of thios has anything to do with the video corruption problem.

 

[Tea]

But it's a different card now! (sob)

It happens sooner now - possibly because of the Nvidia card instead of the Matrox. I can get .... (guessing) 20 to 60 Moz windows/tabs open now, I used to only get the problem with a lot more than that. Oh, maybe 150 or 250.

And back before the problem appeared there seemed to be no limit at all. I could open Moz windows until I clagged up my 1GB of RAM so much that it got too slow to be pleasant.

(And don't laugh: when you are as complicated a household as Tannin and I are, you need lots of windows open.)

 

[Buck]

You can try Moz 1.7.1 and (can someone be ready with smelling salt for my simian friend?) an ATI video card. The same problem you’re experiencing I have experienced with older GeForce cards, and Matrox P650s, not with ATI. Of course that could be entirely coincidental and I still use Matrox in my personal systems. This would probably never happen with OS/2.

 

[Will Rickards WT]

Maybe a mozilla bug?

 

[Buck]

Maybe a mozilla bug?

That is certainly possible. I mean what kind of monkey would open that many tabs anyway?

 

[Mercutio]

It's a known Moz bug. It's been around for at least three years. I've complained about it before.

 

[Buck]

<whisper> Mercutio, yes I remember you mentioning that in the past, but I was trying to get Tony onto ATI cards. </whisper>

 

[Mercutio]

Thing is, I usually have to have many, many hundreds of pictures open before I see that issue.

Exactly how much monkey pr0n are you looking at, Tea?