3D screen savers hesitate/stall/jump

Hi all: I have several 3D screensavers that I used to enjoy watching. For example, Microsoft's Plus Aquarium. Extremely realistic and ran smooth as silk. Now, the fish "freeze" on screen for an instant then start swimming again. Same problem exhibited in other 3D screensavers. Have Sapphire's Raedeon 9800 Pro Video Card. Go to site, they link directly to ATI for latest drivers. Download latest ATI drivers, install, makes matters worse.

Everything slows to a crawl. Roll back drivers, All else ok, but still get hesitation/freeze.

Any ideas what to try to fix this?

All replies are appreciated.

Martin

 

They are designed to behave that way. This isnt a problem that needs investigation, unless you are just curious.

Look at the attached Performance monitor log. See how the Priority of bezier.scr is 4, explorer is 8, LSASS is 9, winlogon is 13. This way if winlogon needs to interrupt your screen saver, or even explorer, it can get time on the processor without a fight. You wouldnt want your fancy shmancy screen saver hogging CPU time when you were trying to connect to a shared network drive. So it comes out of the gate with low priority.

If you wanted to take it to ground, you'll need to take a perfmon with a small interval (1 or 2 secs) if your machine to see whos using CPU while your screen saver is running. I wouldnt bother unless you are just curious. It will be challenging to collect granular enough data to identify EXACTLY what the machine is up to.

 

Hey Joe, thanks. I understand what you are telling me, but, these screen savers used to run without the hesitation. Now, if they are giving up processor time to other background applications which have priority, why start at this late date?

Yeah, they are fancy schmancy, but I like them! I can't be 100% geek. $250.00 for a video card and $30. for MS Plus screensavers, every time those fish stop swimming or my Galleon stops sailing, my stomach scrunches up.

Such is life.

Thanks for the response though, at least I can try to be understanding that my computer's needs are greater than and hold priority over my own.

Martin

 

Those prices mean aboslutely NOTHING

I spent 150$ for a Video Card. X # of dollars for ScreenSavers.

BOTH are sittin in a drawer someplace doin nuttin while a 75$ video card and FREE ScreenSavers are being enjoyed.

As to Video Drivers. MY ANCIENT ones work far better over all than the newest. I had one OLD SS ( back to the 98FE days ) that would not run with the newset drivers for my GeForce 2500 ( I think ) in XP Pro. Rolled back one or two versions of drivers and EVERYTHING is working. And MUCH better at that.

Why we may ask ?

The only answer I can come up with is " They match the rest of the system. "

Newer and higher cost does not always mean better And that is written from EXPERIENCE not guesswork.

BillyBob

 

Something I forgot.

Check out what is running the background.

What changes have you made since they did work fine ?

BillyBob

 

Hi BB, Couldn't said it better myself. Example, I just paid to update Pest Patrol and I don't like the new "better" version interface at all. Besides that the darn thing keeps interrupting me wanting to update itself umpteen times a day. I'd like to get the old version back.

Anyhow, I don't really know what specific changes have been made since the Screen Savers actually ran the way I like. I'm always changing something, and recently did a system restore after a failed attempt to install XP Pro over XP home.

Besides the standard service hosts, there are a bunch on things running in the background. I'm going to shut down some of the items in the Sys Tray, see if stopping any of those background services helps.

Thanks for your input, I was really surprised when I looked into running service, I did not think a bunch of them were using the memory that they are.

Martin

 

Hmm. this might be easy enough to test if its just a priority problem.

Code:

gle=CreateProcess( NULL, 
 "\ "c:\\windows\\system32\\ssbezier.scr\" /s ", 
NULL, NULL, FALSE,
NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,         //set base priority to Normal (pri8)     
NULL, NULL,
&si,            
&pi );       

Should do the trick. Now if martin will read his PM and send me his path to his SCR, we can try it out.

 

Closed everything running is System Tray, and lo and behold, at least for now, screen savers running smooth as silk. Re-enabled one at a time and seems the program "DUmeter" an internet traffic monitor was the biggest offender, causing jerks and starts in the SS.

So, now I can rest easy and sleep soundly tonight knowing my fish are swimming peacefully without any hesitations.

Thanks again BB for your always valuable assistance.

Martin

 

Thanks for the good news.

Enjoy.

And every once in awhile my wild ideas pay off.

BillyBob

 

Lets see if i got this right on the first try

Drop this attached file into your \windows\system32 directory and choose it as your screensaver

Code for the Booster. lame-o, need to have it drive off a regkey to point to a user configurable .SCR.

Code:

{
	STARTUPINFO si;
    PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;
	DWORD gle=0;
	char str[MAX_PATH];
    ZeroMemory( &si, sizeof(si) );
    si.cb = sizeof(si);
    ZeroMemory( &pi, sizeof(pi) );
	ZeroMemory( str,MAX_PATH);
	strcat(str, "\ "c:\\windows\\system32\\plusaqar.scr\"  ");
	strcat(str,lpCmdLine); 
	if (strstr(lpCmdLine, "/s ")||strstr(lpCmdLine, "/S ")) //hack since i didnt want to figure out how to make preview work
		{
		gle=CreateProcess( NULL, 
		str, 
		NULL, NULL, FALSE,
		NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,         //set base priority to Normal (pri8)     
		NULL, NULL,
		&si,            
		&pi );       
		WaitForSingleObject( pi.hProcess, INFINITE ); //gotta do this or it doesnt work in .scr form
		CloseHandle( pi.hProcess );
		CloseHandle( pi.hThread );
		}
	return  0;
}

Attached is a perfmon showing that the booster (screenpri.scr) is running at pri4, but plusaqar.scr is running at 8

 

Hey Joe, Unzipped the file, Unzipped as "Attachment.php" copied and pasted to system 32, but I don't know how to run it as a screen saver??? Clicked file in sys32, says need to know program?

Also, have no Idea what this is:
STARTUPINFO si;
PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;
DWORD gle=0;
char str[MAX_PATH];
ZeroMemory( &si, sizeof(si) );
si.cb = sizeof(si);
ZeroMemory( &pi, sizeof(pi) );
ZeroMemory( str,MAX_PATH);
strcat(str, "\ "c:\\windows\\system32\\plusaqar.scr\" ");
strcat(str,lpCmdLine);
if (strstr(lpCmdLine, "/s ")||strstr(lpCmdLine, "/S ")) //hack since i didnt want to figure out how to make preview work
{
gle=CreateProcess( NULL,
str,
NULL, NULL, FALSE,
NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, //set base priority to Normal (pri8)
NULL, NULL,
&si,
&pi );
WaitForSingleObject( pi.hProcess, INFINITE ); //gotta do this or it doesnt work in .scr form
CloseHandle( pi.hProcess );
CloseHandle( pi.hThread );
}
return 0;
}

Or what I'm supposed to do with it if anything.

What's next?

Did you understand when you started this that you are working with a computer illiterate who has no idea on how to do this kind of stuff?

Martin

 

that attachment.php thing is some quirk of the bbs software. Save it as a FOO.ZIP file, and open it with winzip. Inside the package, you will find BOOSTPRI.SCR, which you want to extract to \windows\system32.
Once you do that, it will show up in your availible screen saver choices.

All that {}{}{ goo is the C code that is driving this program. I included it for the curious masses, it has nothing to do with our experiment.

 

Well Joe, your experiment seems to be working. I can choose Boost.pri as a screen saver, it does not show any screen saver in the little preview window, but Preview and set up for 1 minute runs the aquarium screen saver just like it is supposed to run. I'll try it again with all sys tray items running and see if it cures the hiccups.

Will post back.

Next, if it fixes this one, how do I move on to get the others working, or is this now imbeded for the others?

Martin

 

Hey Joe: Seems that two background programs are causing the stutter, and the Boot.pri install does not fix it. I have to stop Pest Patrol and DU Meter from running in the background. Apparently I had them shut down on first test. Without them running, SS runs smooth, with them running, hiccups every 2- 3 seconds.

Bad news, experiment a failure, (so far) any way to overcome the priority of Pest Patrol? (I'd like to uninstall the new version, don't like it at all)

Martin

 

ABOVE_NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS and HIGH_PRIORITY_CLASS versions are attached.

 

This is just for the aquarium one. If we find a priority that works, and you ask nicely, ill build you a matched set for the SCRs you request, only takes a sec to change and rebuild.

There probably is some far more glamourous way of doing this with image file execution options, but my power tools for investagation are at work

Another thought may be to lower the priority of those task bar goblins.

 

martinr121

I suggest that you think about new Restore Points once you get this situation under control to your liking.

Please do not follow my foot steps where I made changes, forgot about Restore points and used an old one.

YUCK !!! I very much dis-like doing things twice.

It is bad enough doing it once

BillyBob

 

Joe, Pest Patrol and DU Meter running in the background still outrank screen saver at High Pri and Above Normal pri, still fits and starts with either/both running, with Pest Patrol hogging most. tempting to just toss it. Lower priority?? Wanna mess with it?? Lead on McDuff

BillyBob: Thanks for reminding me. last restore with Drive Image, image was a week old, had to redo lots of stuff.

Martin

Oh Oh! Wife threatening divorce if I don't go watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with her, on TV now, got to take a recess.

 

Well, you can use taskmgr to try lowering the offenders priority. Try BelowNormal before you go all the way to LOW. Either way, that should work to signifigantly decrease the stuttering. I'm not convinced this will work. The HIGH.scr is like pri15 or 16 or something like that. Thats double 'normal'. These things much be doing some serious churning.

Only other thing i could think of is to figure out why those apps are churning, but it would be problematic since they dont have publicly availible symbols. Is there some setting for 'active scan' that can be disabled on pest patrol? Its obviously probing at a high rate of churn. Perhaps there is a configuration setting to make it no scan so much.

 

Hey Joe: Fighting a losing battle with this Pesky Pest Patrol. Churning is the right description.

I set the priority on it to below normal, no change, set to low, no change. At approximately 8 second intervals, set at low priority it is using 50% of processor capacity, that would be 1Gig. It is also increasing page file usage by 30MB. Correlates exactly to stalled screen saver interval.

No way in program interface to take the edge off of it's aggressiveness. It is either all or nothing.

At least I'm now certain what is happening. Maybe look for some other spyware/adware program. Or try to go back to old version.

Thanks for all your help, you surely led me in the right direction, along with BillyBob who helped discover what the problem was.

Thanks again to this board.

Martin