Help! My screen is "ticking"
 

Can anyone help me??? My screen pauses very briefly at regular intervals (approximately 3/4 to 1 second intervals) almost like the ticking of a clock. I downloaded GE Force 2 and uninstalled my spam killer and it is still doing it. It's driving me crazy!!!

What frame rate are you getting.

The most common cause I've heard around here seems to be any tray icon that redraws itself. I think I've also heard network card drivers mentioned.

Additionally, I had a GeForce2 MX that I finally retired because it caused this problem. After the SS wold run fine for a while it would start skipping really bad. The card worked perfectly in all other circumstances until much much later when it started having problem waking up my monitor from sleep.

When I push the "s" key I get anything from 13 to 24. Should I try uninstalling and then re-installing? It just started this and I didn't have GE Force before. I tried downloading it as a remedy.

Ge Force is not a piece of software.

This is a GeForce:

http://us.st7.yimg.com/store1.yimg.c...n_1729_9405755

I am curious that are only getting 14-25 fps. Can you tell us what kind of computer this is so we can look up the specs on it?

McKenna,

Like feldon says, GeForce is the hardware you are using. The drivers will have number versions like 4.13.4109 You can check our help page located Here for drivers to suit different cards and operating systems.

My computer is a VPR Matrix, Intel (R), 4CPU, 2.00GHz, 1.99 GHz, 512MB of RAM, Under display adapters it says:
NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2Pro
Driver version 2.1.8.3
Does this help? McK

We're getting closer, but we still need to know what Operating System you are running.

Sorry to be such a Techno-peasant. Windows XP????

Not to worry, it's just that getting your PC specs is very important when trouble shooting. Since we're not there with you, it's the only thing we have to work with to try to help resolve your problem. So please don't misunderstand, the people here really do want to help you. :TU:

That being said, Socrates had a good point. It is possible that software running in the background (items in your system tray) might be causing this problem. Can you tell us (or show us with a screenshot) what is in your tray? This would help to eliminate one possibility.

Thanks, I really do appreciate it because it's very annoying and I LOVE my screensaver!!! OK, here goes the techno-peasant again. How do I find the system tray and how do I send you a screenshot? THANK YOU!! McK

The System Tray is the place at the right bottom of your screen where a bunch of icons probably reside.

Try this:
0.5. Click on the (really small) round button on the left side of the system tray (Sometimes there is no such button). This will make WinXP show all icons in the system tray.
1. Press the key labeled "Print Scrn" (usually located to the right of "F12") – This copies the current screen to memory.
2. Open a graphics editing program of any kind (Even Ms Paint might do the trick!)
3. Paste the image from memory by holding down [Ctrl] and press [V]
4. cut out the portion of the image where the system tray is.
5. Save it.
6. Attach it to a post here (Use the "post reply" button, not the "Quick Reply" window at the bottom).

/Tiny Tutorial

McKenna,

Here is an example. On the bottom right corner of your monitor you should see something next to the time on your screen. This is your sys tray and shows what programs might be running that are TSR's. That stands for Terminate and Stay Resident. Which means that even when you close them they are still doing something in the background. From my example, you can see that I only have three. 1) is sound; 2) is a prox filter; 3) is my connection icon. From that we might be able to tell if there is something else interfering and causing you problems.

WOOOHOOO, I did it!! I closed a bunch of stuff in there and it quit ticking! Thanks everybody! McK

You are most welcome McKenna, glad everything worked out ok. :) Next, for future reference, be aware that depending on how you got rid of them, they could be back the next time that you reboot your computer. Some of them may be useful to you or not. But they are probably loaded into your startup menu and will reload again on boot.

Your welcome McKenna, glad we could help out!

BTW, thanks Tiny and Jav for helping McKenna w/the follow up suggestions regarding the tray after I posted my comments. I was going to post the "how-to" of it, but I was at work and got pulled away shortly after my post. That's one of the nice things about our forum, where one of us leaves off, the others are likely to finish it. :D

This is very important McKenna. If they do comeback, you will have to go into their preferences and turn off or uncheck the "load on startup" option.

It's best to keep system tray icons to a minimum.