WIN XP and strange video slowdown debacle

[potor]

Hi need some feedback on this problem...

have just recently upgraded to XP pro, works all well and good...BUT... theres is some strange visual slowdown...very slow screen updates which cause a massive CPU hit.

for example...I use my PC mainly for music creation, in this case I tried ACID PRO 4.0, a staple, which worked hitchlessly on my win'98. now running a simple composition with a couple of effects is no real strain..and XP seemed all happy, until I moved my mouse, move a windows etc etc Sloooooooow, sound dropouts.... to check this I ran both task manager and another cpu monitor (and other sound software too) and lo-and-behold simply by moving my mouse around vigourously was causing the CPU usage to Max out.

strange...now I don't have a monster rig - its a 700mhz pent 3 256mb ram and gforce2mx (okay its pretty old) it has a few issues, but this is a bit out of hand, I expect this specs to be able to handle the operating system, theres no clever stuff going on..in fact I've stripped XP to the bare bones with tweaking tools to fix this problem, with no luck.

just as an aside...my 3d accelerated games work faster and better now Im on XP (a surprise indeed)and I do have the latest detonator drivers.

Anyone got any ideas? a conflict maybe?
help muchly appreciated

 

[pmonett]

So you have the latest video drivers, good - that is an important point.
You play games, fine. Do you have DirectX 8.1 installed ?
I have had a few instances where I thought my PC was up to date and I still had massive frame stutter from time to time. A DX upgrade later, those issues mysteriously disappeared.
You might also want to check that your sound card drivers are up to date too.

 

[potor]

Hiya, Thanks for the reply.
Will check the DX status, am pretty sure it's 8.1 though.
A further thought: as I was playing around last night It was apparent that resizing windows and generally moving them about was a problem not the soundcard : as it happens during normal computer use and not just sound work (though is more apparent when there's a cpu load)
Does XP visually update differently than previous windows? Its like you can actually "see" the window re-drawing.
I found by switching the CPU priorities from program to background reduced the amount of disruption the windowing problem caused (though still v. apparent)

 

[pmonett]

Maybe you can try toning down the WinXP bells & whistles. Just right-click on the background, you'll have access to some choices there where you can turn off a few of the more heavy animation choices.
I run XP too, but I have set it to the visual state of Win98. It may sound lame, but I am dead tired of having the OS get into the way of the apps I want to run.