Windows Seven Windows Manager Bug

[VaKo]

Its fairly common knowledge, never use the default display driver shipped with Windows and always update your GPU, Monitor, NIC, Printer and Motherboard drivers from the manufacturer. Nearly every device that is found with a windows install will have fixes not found on Microsofts site. Hell, sometimes a fix will break your stuff, so you have to decide, if its not broken, should I bother, and most of the time, no, you should leave them alone unless its a critical security feature. In your case, you still haven't narrowed down the culprit, so this is still a troubleshooting exercise and one more thing to rule out.

With Windows 7 this is actually untrue. All the drivers I have used from WU with W7 work perfectly, which is why its surprising that in this case he is having problems. My only conclusion for in this case is that the heatsink on the GPU is not as effective as the reference heatsink, and the WU drivers run the chip hotter than the manufacturers W7 drivers, resulting in corruption.

[Charles]

I've had the same experience as VaKo, the only driver I needed to install was for my video card. Windows did come with one for it, I believe, but it isn't the NVidia control panel.

[Seph]

Hey I just discovered something reeeally important. It even further confirms my suspicion that this is a windows fault and not a hardware/driver issue.

Windows are no longer flashing black, but they do disappear. Long enough for the windows taskbar to register that the app has closed or something so the icon fades out like it does when you close an app.

Also this NEVER happens to applications that are fullscreen. Blender3d 2.5 is one of the biggest contributors to flashing, but setting it to fullscreen mode makes it run properly.

*shock* can it be.....

Have I found a fault with Windows Seven?!?! D=

Save the children! Pray to god for forgiveness! Lock your doors! Run for the nuclear shelters! NO ONE IS SAFE!

Seriously though, official manufacture drivers for my video card have no effect, and this resent discovery is fairly suspect.

[Sparda]

Usually for a bug in software to be recognised as a bug it has to be reproducible. What happens or do you do before and when this starts happening?

[VaKo]

Turn of Aero and see if it still happens.

[digip]

With Windows 7 this is actually untrue. All the drivers I have used from WU with W7 work perfectly, which is why its surprising that in this case he is having problems. My only conclusion for in this case is that the heatsink on the GPU is not as effective as the reference heatsink, and the WU drivers run the chip hotter than the manufacturers W7 drivers, resulting in corruption.

Ive got 7 running on my machine and still had to download drivers for my Audigy card and somehting else I cant rememnber at the moment, but just because Microsoft has drivers, doesnt mean they are the most current or wont cointain bugs. I would much rather have the ones from the manufacturer than rely on windows alone and everyone I know or have worked with has always said the same thing, get them from the manufacturer and dont rely on MSUS to be the most current. Often Microsoft only gives you basic functionality too, so you may not get the extra applets on the control panels for things like acceleration, throttling, etc.

[Seph]

Usually for a bug in software to be recognised as a bug it has to be reproducible. What happens or do you do before and when this starts happening?

If I knew I would of told you already. As far as I can tell, all this started happening after a windows update (KB976264) but this could just be coincidental. Any windowed application that requires constant updating will flicker, but enter fullscreen mode and all's fine. Even now, I'm using win VGA drivers atm (working with 800x600 res yay....-,-) and I was just about to start up blender to test once again if its still doing it. I opened up explorer and double clicked on the blender folder and it flashed. Didnt open the folder. Similar thing happens in blender3d 2.5, when I try to click on anything blender will flash. It seems to be more common with applications that use graphics perhaps? Say Chrome playing flash, VBAdvance and Torchlight. Anything in a window, but again, moment I have it fullscreen....No more flashing. (And please dont point out that torchlight and blender use 3d so it "has to be your video card!" not true, right now I have the old skool win 2k theme. You know with the grey start bar? And its still flashing god damn it! </rant>)

Turn of Aero and see if it still happens.

Already been done dude, like in the first page. Ineffective.

Anyway to sum up. I can pretty much GUARANTEE that this is not a video card problem. All the evidence so far says its something else.

[digip]

If I knew I would of told you already. As far as I can tell, all this started happening after a windows update (KB976264) but this could just be coincidental.

If you suspect that, uninstall the update, reboot, and see what happens. If it still happens, then its not the update, but another one to rule out.

Question. Did it do it after installing this blender app, or before? Is there any special stuff you installed, like a game that has its own drivers? I remember Unreal having some additional graphic acceleration thingy back in the day and would cause all sorts of havoc with cards, but was optional, so you could work around it. Wonder if something you installed is causing the bug, like a seperate driver, software, type problem. Might just be that 7 isnt compaible with your hardware? Did the laptop come with it preinstalled?

Edited March 14, 2010 by digip

[Seph]

First thing I did when I thought it was that update, uninstalling didnt help but by then the damage was probably already done?.....probably not.

And blender isnt installed, its just a stand alone exe. When I reinstalled Seven I then installed all the necessary apps and such. The only thing that I installed when this all started again was Foxit Reader and that windows update. We can go drastic and reinstall Seven again, then document everything that happens till we have the issue again.

Oh and this laptop used to have vista on it, Upgraded to XP then finally Upgraded again to Seven. So having a machine built for Vista; It'll Seven fine.

[Sparda]

What are the chances that 7 uses an esoteric feature of DirectX that is broken on your graphics card? Perhaps it's even stranger, perhaps there is an area of memory that brakes if it holds a particular pattern of data which causes this?

There are so many possibilities with this problem. The fact that it is not present with a fresh install may indicate that it is a software problem, but it might just be hiding an actual hardware problem. Like when it's tuesday and the system clock is using 0.00001mw more power than normal it causes it to happen, and some how it stays stuck until a reinstall because the rapid changing of resolutions on the graphics card causes the memory to be flushed or some random shit like that that would piss of a software developer no end and implement various hacks all over the place to prevent it.

I have not been able to locate any one else with a problem like this (at least with google), I personally have been using 7 all over the place and not had any problems even remotely like this.

This is probably some weird hardware and software problem.

This is just an aside example which happened to my self:

Computer stopped working, couldn't find the domain. Had a look, NIC light is on, compute knows it's physically plugged in to the switch and knows when it's unplugged. No DHCP response. Check network activity light on NIC, acting normal, check activity light on switch, constantly flashing. Try another port, same thing (constantly flashing, no DHCP response according to OS). Other computers work find in those sockets on the switch. So any way, the NIC was working in every respect except the actual communication of data and the fact that it made switches angry.

[digip]

What are the chances that 7 uses an esoteric feature of DirectX that is broken on your graphics card? Perhaps it's even stranger, perhaps there is an area of memory that brakes if it holds a particular pattern of data which causes this?

There are so many possibilities with this problem. The fact that it is not present with a fresh install may indicate that it is a software problem, but it might just be hiding an actual hardware problem. Like when it's tuesday and the system clock is using 0.00001mw more power than normal it causes it to happen, and some how it stays stuck until a reinstall because the rapid changing of resolutions on the graphics card causes the memory to be flushed or some random shit like that that would piss of a software developer no end and implement various hacks all over the place to prevent it.

I have not been able to locate any one else with a problem like this (at least with google), I personally have been using 7 all over the place and not had any problems even remotely like this.

This is probably some weird hardware and software problem.

This is just an aside example which happened to my self:

Computer stopped working, couldn't find the domain. Had a look, NIC light is on, compute knows it's physically plugged in to the switch and knows when it's unplugged. No DHCP response. Check network activity light on NIC, acting normal, check activity light on switch, constantly flashing. Try another port, same thing (constantly flashing, no DHCP response according to OS). Other computers work find in those sockets on the switch. So any way, the NIC was working in every respect except the actual communication of data and the fact that it made switches angry.

Ive had many issues with 7 and vista as well with respect to DHCP. I manually set all my connections, and disable dhcp, but 7 occasionally stops working. It is in part due to the fact that they rewrote the TCP stack for vista and 7, and like you used to be able to uninstall the tcp protocol in XP and then reinstall it, 7 does not allow this as its built in to the system and often requires a reboot to fix the damn connection. I also ran into some problems with it using IPv6, and have not only disabled changed some other default settings within 7 which can be seen here:

http://www.twistedpairrecords.com/blog/200...ctivity-issues/

This may or may not be related to your problem, but like I documented in the above link, Windows 7 (and probably Vista, I havent looked into it) tries to dial home to a Microsoft site for DNS resolution. If for any reason it cant reach it, your DHCP discovery will stop working and often give you the dreaded 169.254.x.x APIPA address instead. Even manually setting an IP address and turning off the DHCP and DNS client services werent helping, but would fix on a reboot after setting manually. Whats funny is, sometimes you could get an address from the router, but no sites would load and DNS would fail. Ping the domain name, no go, ping its known IP address, it replies fine, so there is definately some bug in the implementation of their networking setup.

There are also two tasks in the Task Scheduler upon a default install which are part of its "if I cant conenct, diagnose and fix the problem for me" shit, which seems to work when it wants, but probably does more harm than good.

[VaKo]

Your disabling DHCP? Why? As for not having an internet connection when your setting up networking on W7, never had an issue with this myself, even in non-routeable subnets.

As for the original poster, I'm going to mark this down as "fuck knows", you've done everything anyone here would do, the only thing is to setup a fresh install and do a change log, just in case its some weird little problem caused by a completely unrelated thing. Because personally if I'd had this level of issue, I'd have gotten Dell to send one of its magic gnomes round with a new motherboard by now. (I've seen a laptop that would boot and run Ubuntu without issue, but XP would BSOD at the login screen no matter how many times or ways it was installed, turned out to be a issue with the mobo).

[digip]

Your disabling DHCP? Why? As for not having an internet connection when your setting up networking on W7, never had an issue with this myself, even in non-routeable subnets.

As for the original poster, I'm going to mark this down as "fuck knows", you've done everything anyone here would do, the only thing is to setup a fresh install and do a change log, just in case its some weird little problem caused by a completely unrelated thing. Because personally if I'd had this level of issue, I'd have gotten Dell to send one of its magic gnomes round with a new motherboard by now. (I've seen a laptop that would boot and run Ubuntu without issue, but XP would BSOD at the login screen no matter how many times or ways it was installed, turned out to be a issue with the mobo).

I have DHCP disabled and set manually on each machine because I wanted static addresses for port forwarding certain services on my router for specific machines on the LAN. I still have DHCP set up for the laptop though, but XP doesn't give me any issues with connectivity.

7 would stop working, and you could see in my blog post above what it was doing, or at least what I think was going on. Now, it doesn't contact that site for a heart beat and since I went static, it works fine. I've even had this problem on my tech school's lan where I just built a new Vista x64 business machine. It was doing the same shit saying it can't find an address from DHCP and kept giving me the 169.254.x.x address until I would reboot it. Didnt matter what I tried in the OS, restarting the services, disable the nic, IPCONFIG renew, release, etc.

I could see at schcool that being an issue more with congestion adn no available addresses, but on my home network when there are only 2-3 machines in use at all times and DHCP is set up for handing out more than that many addresses on the router itself, it makes you start to wonder what is the root cause is, which is why I just set them static now.

Edited March 14, 2010 by digip

[Charles]

As for the original poster, I'm going to mark this down as "fuck knows", you've done everything anyone here would do, the only thing is to setup a fresh install and do a change log, just in case its some weird little problem caused by a completely unrelated thing. Because personally if I'd had this level of issue, I'd have gotten Dell to send one of its magic gnomes round with a new motherboard by now. (I've seen a laptop that would boot and run Ubuntu without issue, but XP would BSOD at the login screen no matter how many times or ways it was installed, turned out to be a issue with the mobo).

I'd do the same thing, send the damn thing to Dell for a new mobo.

I have DHCP disabled and set manually on each machine because I wanted static addresses for port forwarding certain services on my router for specific machines on the LAN. I still have DHCP set up for the laptop though, but XP doesn't give me any issues with connectivity.

7 would stop working, and you could see in my blog post above what it was doing, or at least what I think was going on. Now, it doesn't contact that site for a heart beat and since I went static, it works fine. I've even had this problem on my tech school's lan where I just built a new Vista x64 business machine. It was doing the same shit saying it can't find an address from DHCP and kept giving me the 169.254.x.x address until I would reboot it. Didnt matter what I tried in the OS, restarting the services, disable the nic, IPCONFIG renew, release, etc.

I could see at schcool that being an issue more with congestion adn no available addresses, but on my home network when there are only 2-3 machines in use at all times and DHCP is set up for handing out more than that many addresses on the router itself, it makes you start to wonder what is the root cause is, which is why I just set them static now.

That is quite strange. I know I had a hell of a problem when I was running Windows 7 Beta/RC and connecting to a new network. I ended up having to use a 10/100 PCI NIC instead of my gigabit onboard NIC to get around the problem. It would just keep saying "unknown network" and not let me get an IP address via DHCP. I wonder if that was what was happening to you. I haven't had that happen on W7 RTM tho. *shrugs*

[digip]

I'd do the same thing, send the damn thing to Dell for a new mobo.

That is quite strange. I know I had a hell of a problem when I was running Windows 7 Beta/RC and connecting to a new network. I ended up having to use a 10/100 PCI NIC instead of my gigabit onboard NIC to get around the problem. It would just keep saying "unknown network" and not let me get an IP address via DHCP. I wonder if that was what was happening to you. I haven't had that happen on W7 RTM tho. *shrugs*

Ive had this DHCP problem on Win 7 Pro, Win 7 Home Premium, and Vista Business. All 64 bit systems. Got tired of rebooting every time in order to fix it so took matters into my own hands. I think its related to the same issue Sparda mentioned above, but this is just my guess based on my own problems with connectivity.

I know I had a hell of a problem when I was running Windows 7 Beta/RC and connecting to a new network. I ended up having to use a 10/100 PCI NIC instead of my gigabit onboard NIC to get around the problem.

I think the fact that you powered off the machine and put another card in, probably would have fixed the issue with the original onboard card. like I was saying a reboot was all that would get it working again.

Edited March 15, 2010 by digip

[digip]

I had another idea to try. If your laptop has an external display port, try running a different monitor for a few days and leave the laptop's LCD off to see if you can reproduce it on the external monitor. This way you can know at least if its reproducable on more than one screen.

Could even go as far as getting a shuttle for the laptop HDD and running the laptops OS in another machine. If that reproduced the problem without even using the laptops hardware, then I would say its somewhere in the OS or drivers. If it cant be reproduced via running the HDD in another machine, then chances are its hardware in the Laptop itself.

Edited March 16, 2010 by digip

[Seph]

Not bad ideas. I wouldn't of minded giving them a go but yet again, its a bit late. Ive already reinstalled. That and I have no money to buy a shuttle anyway XD

This time I'm going to document things I install to the time this (if it does) starts flashing again. See what happens.

[digip]

Not bad ideas. I wouldn't of minded giving them a go but yet again, its a bit late. Ive already reinstalled. That and I have no money to buy a shuttle anyway XD

This time I'm going to document things I install to the time this (if it does) starts flashing again. See what happens.

Also document patches and custom configurations. Do one patch at a time (I know, sux) so you can see if a Microsoft Update is breaking it as well. If it is a MSU, then you should report it to M$.

Edited March 16, 2010 by digip

[Seph]

Also document patches and suctom configurations. Do one patch at a time (I know, sux) so you can see if a Microsoft Update is breaking it as well. If it is a MSU, then you should report it to M$.

'Course

[Charles]

Hope you are able to find out what is causing the problem and if it follows to a new install.