10721 Repaint failure

[chrisjj]

Occasionally BC gets into a state wherein moving/downsizing/miniming the main window or a dialog fails to repain the exposed background e.g. moves here:



The mimimise case it a particular PITA because it leaves an unusable hole in the display.

No other app I've seen does this. In this case I just tried five other apps and none of them did it. After exit and relaunch, nor did BC.

[Aaron]

Hello,

If you right click and refresh your desktop, does it clear up the painting issue there? Is the painting issue only over the BC3 application, or over general desktop area?

A full screen screenshot may help demonstrate the issue more clearly.

[chrisjj]

> If you right click and refresh your desktop, does it clear up the painting issue there?

I will try next time.

> Is the painting issue only over the BC3 application, or over general desktop area?

I don't understand what you mean by "over" here. The repaint failure is only in areas vacated by a moved or minimised BC (main or not) window.

> A full screen screenshot may help demonstrate the issue more clearly.

The area excluded contained only background, icons and task bar, but yes I shall take a full screen shot next time.

Thanks Aaron. I would really like to get this solved.

[Aaron]

Thanks. All additional info is appreciated, and we haven't had this happen in house or have had other reports yet, so we'll need to try and track down what may be causing it before we can reproduce it in the office.

Also, you may want to be sure you are using the most up to date version of your graphics drivers.

Repainting is generally the responsibility of the program that needs to update its appearance; not the application on top, but the one below. If the one below is only having a problem with BC3, there may be a conflict between BC3 and one or more programs running causing the issue to manifest.

Did this issue occur at all with BC2? Has it always occured with BC3 or did it pop-up more recently? Have there been any changes to your system around the time the problem began?

[chrisjj]

> Repainting is generally the responsibility of the program that needs to update
> its appearance; not the application on top, but the one below.

Understood. Buthis same app (Windows desktop background) has no problem with repainting other apps.

> If the one below is only having a problem with BC3, there may be a conflict
> between BC3 and one or more programs running causing the issue to manifest.

BC's was the only non-minimised window. I have no fancy desktop accessories like desktop swicthers, task switchers.

> Did this issue occur at all with BC2?

Not that I recall, but BC3 gets 10x the use here.

> Has it always occured with BC3 or did it pop-up more recently?

Always IIRC.

> Have there been any changes to your system around the time the problem
> began?

Just installation of BC3

[Aaron]

Are your graphics drivers at their most up to date? And the other programs running may not need to be maximized. It may be causing a conflict simply by being a running process at the same time (some odd conflict with BC3, another process like anti-virus, and a graphics driver), or some other combination.

I have not seen the issue myself on my machine, and I have a lot of misc software installed for testing, and I am currently running XP. Chris has similar uses and is currently running Vista.

[chrisjj]

> some odd conflict with BC3

With or Of, for sure. I'll let you know if I come across any further info.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Repaint issues in XP

One thing you can check for painting issues in XP is the following registry key:

[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\System Pages]

If you find a value other than 0, I would put it back to 0 (system managed).
One symptom of a value too high is strange repaint issues. Doco from Microsoft:

Type: REG_DWORD
Range: 0x0 | 0x1–0xFFFFFFFE entries | 0xFFFFFFFF
Default value: 0x0
Description: Defines the number of system page table entries that are reserved for mapping I/O buffers and other information into the system address space. Each system page table entry maps one page.

0x0 - The system calculates an optimal number of page table entries based on the platform type and the amount of memory available to the system. The system adjusts this value if the amount of memory changes.
0x1 to 0xFFFFFFFE - Specifies the number of reserved page table entries. This value takes precedence over the system's calculated value, and it prevents the system from adjusting the value.
0xFFFFFFFF - Maximize system pages. The system creates the largest number of page table entries possible within physical memory. The system monitors and adjusts this value dynamically when the configuration changes.

Caution: Do not change the value of this entry. Changing it prevents the system from calculating an optimal value for your system and adjusting the value when your system changes.

[chrisjj]

> Doco from Microsoft:

Thanks (verified at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...02(WS.10).aspx )

> If you find a value other than 0

I find

SystemPages REG_DWORD 0x000c3000 (798720)

despite not changing it since install.

> I would put it back to 0 (system managed).

Have done. Thanks Michael.


Type: REG_DWORD
Range: 0x0 | 0x1–0xFFFFFFFE entries | 0xFFFFFFFF
Default value: 0x0
Description: Defines the number of system page table entries that are reserved for mapping I/O buffers and other information into the system address space. Each system page table entry maps one page.

0x0 - The system calculates an optimal number of page table entries based on the platform type and the amount of memory available to the system. The system adjusts this value if the amount of memory changes.
0x1 to 0xFFFFFFFE - Specifies the number of reserved page table entries. This value takes precedence over the system's calculated value, and it prevents the system from adjusting the value.
0xFFFFFFFF - Maximize system pages. The system creates the largest number of page table entries possible within physical memory. The system monitors and adjusts this value dynamically when the configuration changes.

Caution: Do not change the value of this entry. Changing it prevents the system from calculating an optimal value for your system and adjusting the value when your system changes.[/QUOTE]

[Michael Bulgrien]

Okay... c3000 was probably not large enough to be the issue. We had a whole slew of users in our company that were having painting issues and apps hanging. Turned out to be caused by this registry key. But in our case, the setting was set to maximize system pages.