Added GeForce 6200, now Excel 2003 keystrokes are slow 1

[guitarzan]

I installed a GeForce 6200 video card (dual inputs) to a Dell Optiplex 330 (XP Pro SP3). I installed what I believe to be the latest drivers (v275.33).

Everything is fine except for one issue. When I use Remote Desktop to connect to another computer (either an XP machine or a 2003 Terminal Server), the keystrokes in Excel 2003 (on the remote machine) are slow, or maybe I should say, "sluggish". Let's say you hold down the down-arrow key... when you finally release it, the cursor in Excel continues to go down, way past the point you wanted to stop. Other keys do the same thing, but it's most noticeable with the cursor keys.

This behavior started after adding this video card. It does not happen when using Excel locally, and on the remote machines, no other application seems to exhibit this behavior; only Excel. It's to the point where Excel is unusable on this machine (well, it's usable locally but this user does a lot of work on Terminal Server). I tried different screen resolutions, and no change. Does anyone have any ideas of what to do to get around this problem?

 

[FredWagner]

Do you mean your new video card drives two monitors (dual output)?
It sounds as though your video hardware wants to assume that the remote PC also has dual monitors, and is scanning for activity that isn't going to happen. My suggestion is to use a machine that's as similar as possible to the machine you're remoting into, screen resolution, number of monitors, etc. If you do a lot of remote support, perhaps a KVM switch, and a single monitor PC that you can switch to when controlling single-monitor PCs.

Fred Wagner

 

[guitarzan]

Thanks for the reply, Fred.

Yes, the local machine is the Optiplex 330, which now has two 22" widescreen monitors. Although some things are done directly on this workstation, primarily this user connects to a 2003 Terminal Server, so there is no screen resolution to set on the machine being remoted into.

I create two .RDP files, one in normal mode (The RDP session takes up one monitor) and another in "Span" mode (The RDP session spans both monitors). The problem happens on either. The problem also happens when i RDP to an XP computer.

This site has many computers with dual monitors (though none are Optiplex 330's, and none use the GeForce 6200). Most are old Optiplex GX260's and all of them work fine with dual monitors and RDP to the Terminal Server, except for one that had this exact problem also. (that one had two video cards and three widescreens attached, but has now been replaced and is offline at the moment)

 

[FredWagner]

It sounds like the GeForce 6200 is not compatible with your terminal server setup. Just eplicate the setups that work, rather than racking your brain to figure out why this one doesn't!

Fred Wagner

 

[guitarzan]

True, I may try the GeForce in a different computer and see if the problem follows. I hadn't used this card before, but got it because I needed one for a low profile computer.

 

[FredWagner]

I wonder if the low profile computer with the problem actually uses mapped 'regular' RAM for Video RAM...which might be the cause of the problem, which might happen with any multi-monitor card you use. They have to take some shortcuts to get the works into the low profile case and meet a price point.

Fred Wagner

 

[kjv1611]

Is the 6200 a PCI, VGA, or PCI Express card? If it's a PCI card, then it may be using the bandwidth from the PCI bus, and taking away direct bandwidth from the network connection.

Check the Video Memory settings in BIOS as suggested by FredWagner for sure.

And it does make me wonder about the dual monitor setup possibly causing the issues. Can you try different software to see if a different application handles the remote connection differently?