Desktop keeps refreshing

[Nelviticus]

Every few minutes or so my whole desktop does what I can only describe as a "refresh". The screen flashes briefly and any open IE windows have their contents reloaded. Sometimes the active window loses focus as well.

I am fairly sure that this isn't a virus or malware issue because firstly I'm very careful about what content I access and secondly we have Sophos anti-virus installed and regularly updated (this is a work PC).

It all started a few weeks ago but I don't recall installing anything that might have caused this behaviour. I've tried watching the process list in Task Manager to see whether anything leaps to the top when it happens but it's so quick that it doesn't register.

Any ideas what might be causing it and what I can do about it? We're using IE 6.0.2800.1106 and this is a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with a gig of RAM and integrated Intel graphics. I've tried turning down video hardware acceleration but that made no difference. I might be allowed to repair IE but I certainly won't be allowed to upgrade it to a newer version.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[bcastner]

This is an Explorer problem and not and IE problem.

I still would suspect malware, but check your Event Viewer.


____________________________
Users Helping Users

 

[Nelviticus]

There are no errors in any of the event logs for today but there are loads of info entries from MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS that read "Starting up database 'ReportServer$SQLExpressTempDB'".

I don't know whether that's normal for SQL Express or not - after all they're info entries, not errors or warnings. Nevertheless I'll try un/re-installing SQL Express to see whether that fixes the problem.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[Nelviticus]

Well I've uninstalled Express edition of SQL Server and replaced it with the developer edition and there are no longer multiple entries appearing in my event log. I have installed Ad-Aware and done a full scan, followed by a full Sophos virus scan. Apart from a few tracking cookies both came up empty.

Any idea what else I can try, other than different malware scanners?

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[bcastner]

You do not have an IM program running I assume?

Try adjusting the Focus setting:

This tweak requires the modification of two values, depending on the way you would like applications to take the focus. The first setting controls whether applications simply steal the focus, that is pop-up over the existing in focus window, or if instead they wait in the background and flash the taskbar icon. The second setting controls the flashing of the icon.

Open your registry and find the key below.

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value named 'ForegroundLockTimeout', change the value to either the timeout required, or to '0' which causes the application to take the focus instantly. The default value is '200000' (0x00030d40 hex).

The other settings affects the number of times the icon flashes if above value was not set to zero.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called 'ForegroundFlashCount' set the value (in decimal) to the number times to flash the taskbar icon, setting the value to '0' cases the icon to flash infinitely. The default value is '3'.

ForegroundFlashCount REG_DWORD 0x00000003 (3)
ForegroundLockTimeout REG_DWORD 0x00030d40 (200000)

The setting takes effect after a restart.




____________________________
Users Helping Users

 

[Nelviticus]

bcastner thanks for the tip, which I can use, but it's a method of making the symptoms less painful rather than being a cure for the problem. I just had it happen again with no IE windows open and I could see that my desktop icons were all being refreshed - a bit like when you select the desktop and hit F5. Deeply mysterious. I think I'll just have to stare at Task Manager for 10 mins without blinking and hope that I can spot which process leaps up in activity!

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[2ffat]

I've run across this a few time on XP, too. I'm sure it's not malware, at least on my machine. I've tracked it down to a couple of sources in my case. One was my calendaring system. For some reason it was having a hard time starting and kept trying to refresh the screen. The other was my AV program (e-Trust). It couldn't connect to the update server and was causing problems. In my case, it seems to be hit or miss. It's annoying as %$&* but no real damage was done.

Another thought, how long has it been since you thoroughly checked and defragged you hard drive?



James P. Cottingham
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^{I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229!}

 

[Nelviticus]

It's been a while since I checked my hard drive for errors or defragged it but I don't see how that could be the problem. It's not that something 'normal' is happening but working slowly, it's that something 'abnormal' is happening - the OS is re-painting all open windows. It just happened again a moment ago and a dialog box that I had open didn't repaint properly - the controls on the tab I was looking at weren't re-drawn so I ended up looking at an empty tab.

I had another refresh when I was replying to a TT post earlier today. It's not the same as an F5 refresh because that would empty the edit box, but the text in IE's status bar shows that it's re-loading all the elements on the page ("n items remaining" counting down).

Weird. And annoying.

Nelviticus