Screen update lag

I've got a 2.4Ghz Macbook Pro with 2Gb of memory which I bought last Jan so I guess it's the late 2008 model. The issue I have is that, although under all other conditions it performs perfectly, when there's a lot happening on screen such as a mast moving video or playing a 3d accelerated game such as Quake 4, the screen seems to get updated in roughly four horizontal chunks. You can see there's a split-second delay between consecutive chunks. This happens when using both the 9400 and the 9600 chipsets. Is this standard behaviour and I'm just being picky or is this a sign of something going wrong with the hardware? I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.2 with all the latest updates including the EFI update.
Thanks!

Well I finally stuck my hand in my pocket and upgraded to 4Gb but it hasn't solved the problem. Although upgrading to 10.6.3 seems to have made things slightly worse - is that possible? Could it be a heat-related issue with the 9600 chipset?
My barometer for this has been running the Quake 4 demo and you can see all through the intro movies that there's a strip about an inch high running down the middle of the screen that tends to lag behind everything else when there's a lot of stuff happening on screen.
I tried running Q4 in windowed mode with Activity Monitor running but it's not even putting a 50% load on the CPU (which you'd hope given the age of Q4...) and this problem doesn't seem to occur with pure video content - DVDs or iTunes movies for example. I did notice that it was a lot less noticable in windowed mode than stretched onto full screen.
Could it be a scaling issue given that the Q4 demo wants to run 800x600 and the MBP screen is 1440x900? Or could it be a problem with the fact that Q4 is 32 bit and I'm running OSX in 64 bit? Or is it time for a trip to the Genius bar?
It might just be a fact of life with 3d cards? I've never noticed it on anything I've ever owned before but when I put Final Fantasy XIII in my PS3 today I saw to my shock that it was producing much the same effect - does FF13 tax the GPU much more than any other game I've ever had? It seems reasonable that it could be the case but Q4 overtaxing an MBP seems a bit of a stretch?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated?

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When typing a new email in Mail for Yosemite, letters on the screen often lag behind key presses.

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Any suggestions?

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My macbook air is hanging and its screen is lagging,it is not working smoothly,what should i do?

product-macbook air,intel i5,4gb ram,128gb hardisk,os-10.9.5
my macbook is hanging and its screen is lagging,it is not working smoothly,what should i do?

Problem description:
hanging and screen is lagging
EtreCheck version: 2.0.6 (91)
Report generated 29 October 2014 5:14:19 pm IST
Hardware Information: ℹ️
MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2013) (Verified)
MacBook Air - model: MacBookAir6,1
1 1.3 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2-core
4 GB RAM Not upgradeable
BANK 0/DIMM0
2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok
BANK 1/DIMM0
2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok
Bluetooth: Good - Handoff/Airdrop2 supported
Wireless: en0: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Video Information: ℹ️
Intel HD Graphics 5000 -
Color LCD 1366 x 768
System Software: ℹ️
OS X 10.9.5 (13F34) - Uptime: 0:5:17
Disk Information: ℹ️
APPLE SSD TS0128F disk0 : (121.33 GB)
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB
Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 120.99 GB (60.95 GB free)
USB Information: ℹ️
Western Digital My Passport 0820 1 TB
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
My Passport (disk1s1) /Volumes/My Passport : 1 TB (690.26 GB free)
Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Thunderbolt Information: ℹ️
Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
Gatekeeper: ℹ️
Mac App Store and identified developers
Launch Agents: ℹ️
[not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist Support
Launch Daemons: ℹ️
[invalid?] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist Support
[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist Support
User Launch Agents: ℹ️
[loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist Support
[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support
User Login Items: ℹ️
iTunesHelper Application (/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)
Autodesk 360 Application (/Applications/Autodesk/Autodesk 360.app)
Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.0.0 Support
iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0 - SDK 10.8
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 14.9.0 - SDK 10.7 Check version
Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9
User Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
iGetterScriptablePlugin: Version: 2.9.2 Support
Safari Extensions: ℹ️
iGetter Extension
3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️
None
Time Machine: ℹ️
Skip System Files: NO
Auto backup: YES
Volumes being backed up:
Macintosh HD: Disk size: 120.99 GB Disk used: 60.04 GB
Destinations:
My Passport [Local]
Total size: 1 TB
Total number of backups: 4
Oldest backup: 2014-10-26 17:07:25 +0000
Last backup: 2014-10-29 10:50:49 +0000
Size of backup disk: Excellent
Backup size 1 TB > (Disk size 120.99 GB X 3)
Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️
      4% WindowServer
      1% fontd
      0% AppleSpell
      0% cfprefsd
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107 MB mds_stores
86 MB Google Chrome
60 MB Google Chrome Helper
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1.31 GB Active RAM
350 MB Inactive RAM
537 MB Wired RAM
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Why does JRockit updates lag behind Sun's?

If I understand correctly, JRockit's class libraries are exactly the same as Sun's.
Sun has already released update 8 for their 1.5.0 JRE, and JRockit is still at update 6, which means that the class library bugs fixed in update 7 and 8 are still present in JRockit.
Why does JRockit updates lag behind Sun's? Judging by [url http://forums.bea.com/bea/message.jspa?messageID=600038245&tstart=0]this post, this lag is measured in months!
Doesn't the VM development happen separate from the class libraries? It should be possible to release a new JRE with the "stable", QA'd JRockit VM and the newest class library (with all its bug fixes) within a week or so, instead of months.

The class libraries are almost identical, correct. But a JDK update from Sun almost always contains changes in other components than just the class libraries. Some of these affect JRockit, in particular the native libraries (AWT, I/O, etc). Changes in the class libraries may cause performance or stability regressions.
With every release of JRockit we certify our JDK (Sun classes + JRockit JVM + other components) on a large number of platforms. We did a count earlier this year and came up with around 80 different combinations of JDK level, OS and hardware that we have to test in every release by the end of this year.
On these platforms we run a huge set of tests, including performance and stress tests. Even though a large part of our QA is automated, it is simply not possible to run everything in parallel so there is a certain minimum amount of time this certification takes. On top of that we have a set of time-consuming tests that have to be run manually.
To summarize it is simply not possible to do this without some lag. And JRockit has a much quicker uptake than almost all other 3rd party JDK providers (many of them with JVMs based on Sun HotSpot). One example is that it took IBM almost 18 months to get their first J2SE 5.0 implementation out of the door.

ScreenUpdating=False fails to prevent screen updating, and causes bizarre behaviour

I have recently installed Office 2013 (MSO Standard 2013) on my (Win 7 Professional) computer. During a brief transitional period, Office 2003 will remain on my computer.
I had been looking forward to running the many Excel VBA applications on Excel 2013, but am not only disappointed, but alarmed. We are significantly dependent on over 50 business applications running in Excel VBA (many of which are complex,
and many of which I have developed), but we now find that seemingly one difference alone (though we may yet discover more) is rendering many of them virtually unusable. That difference is the behaviour of the Application.ScreenUpdating method.
In Excel 2003, the ScreenUpdating method behaved intuitively, predictably and reliably. It basically does what it says - all screen updating, except for the status bar, is frozen. To allow users to peek at any updates, one would simply
set ScreenUpdating=True and at the appropriate point freeze updating with ScreenUpdating=False. Now, in Excel 2013, we are instead finding behaviour which has to be described as bizarre, counterintuitive and destructive. Essentially, what is happening
is that whenever another worksheet is activated, ScreenUpdating=False does not prevent screen updating - and for good measure, there are a number of other unpleasant side-effects. I have spent many long hours searching through hundreds of forum posts
and testing workarounds - all without success. I have seen many posts complaining about ScreenUpdating in Excel 2013, but not a single implementable solution. Yes, I've seen the advice about replacing Select or Activate methods with objects, but
this workaround would not only be extremely costly and impractical in our case (it would require reworking tens of thousands of lines of code and would probably take many person months of unjustifiable work), it almost certainly wouldn't work. (You'll
have to take my word on that.) And all because ScreenUpdating=False doesn't really prevent screen updating any more! I cannot accept that ScreenUpdating is working properly in Excel 2013, nor that its functionality is in any way acceptable.
The problems are best illustrated with a simple example. I created this example to verify that the flickering was unrelated to the complexity of the business applications I referred to above. In this example, there is a "master"
workbook named "ScreenUpdatingTest.xls". This contains a single button on its only worksheet, and this button executes macro "TestScreenUpdating". This macro turns screen updating off, then sequentially opens workbook AAA.xls,
workbook BBB.xls and workbook CCC.xls with a 3 second interval between each workbook being opened. After 3 more seconds, it activates workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls and then turns screen updating on. Along the way, it reports these actions in
the status bar. One would expect that this would result in AAA, BBB and CCC being opened in the background, with the user seeing no changes on the screen apart from the status bar and the workbooks appearing in the task bar. This is precisely what
happens in Excel 2003.
By contrast, Excel 2013 seems to do absolutely nothing for about 12 seconds (even the task bar and the status bar remains unchanged), then, AAA, BBB and CCC can be seen to open (in maximized windows) in rapid succession. The only message I see in the
status bar is the last one, "Switched back to ScreenUpdatingTest.xls." Even more bizarrely, that there is a call to Msgbox "Hi" just before the Application.ScreenUpdating=True at the end of the subroutine - and this should be unrelated
to which workbook the focus end up with, right? Wrong! If Msgbox "Hi" is commented out, the focus ends up with CCC.xls - in other words, Workbooks(ThisWorkbook.Name).Activate seems to be ignored. But if Msgbox "Hi" is
uncommented, the focus ends up with ScreenUpdatingTest.xls! This is crazy, isn't it?
Sub TestScreenUpdating()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.Wait Now() + TimeValue("00:00:03")
Workbooks.Open ThisWorkbook.Path & "\AAA.xls"
Windows("AAA.xls").Activate
Application.StatusBar = "AAA.xls has been opened."
'Excel 2003:
' I see workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls on the screen with no flickering.
' AAA.xls is open in the task bar.
' The message that AAA.xls has been opened appears in the status bar.
'Excel 2013:
' I see workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls on the screen with no flickering.
' AAA.xls is >>>NOT<<< open in the task bar
' >>>NO<<< message that AAA.xls has been opened appears in the status bar.
Application.Wait Now() + TimeValue("00:00:03")
Workbooks.Open ThisWorkbook.Path & "\BBB.xls"
Windows("BBB.xls").Activate
Application.StatusBar = "BBB.xls has been opened."
'Excel 2003:
' I see workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls on the screen with no flickering.
' AAA.xls and BBB.xls are open in the task bar.
' The message that BBB.xls has been opened appears in the status bar.
'Excel 2013:
' I see workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls on the screen with no flickering.
' AAA.xls and BBB.xls are >>>NOT<<< open in the task bar.
' >>>NO<<< message that BBB.xls has been opened appears in the status bar.
Application.Wait Now() + TimeValue("00:00:03")
Workbooks.Open ThisWorkbook.Path & "\CCC.xls"
Windows("CCC.xls").Activate
Application.StatusBar = "CCC.xls has been opened."
'Excel 2003:
' I see workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls on the screen with no flickering.
' AAA.xls, BBB.xls and CCC.xls are open in the task bar.
' The message that CCC.xls has been opened appears in the status bar.
'Excel 2013:
' I see workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls on the screen with no flickering.
' AAA.xls, BBB.xls and CCC.xls are >>>NOT<<< open in the task bar.
' >>>NO<<< message that CCC.xls has been opened appears in the status bar.
Application.Wait Now() + TimeValue("00:00:03")
Workbooks(ThisWorkbook.Name).Activate
Application.StatusBar = "Switched back to ScreenUpdatingTest.xls."
MsgBox "Hi"
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
'Excel 2003:
' I see workbook ScreenUpdatingTest.xls on the screen with no flickering.
' AAA.xls, BBB.xls and CCC.xls are open in the task bar.
' The message that we have switched back to ScreenUpdatingTest.xls appears in the status bar.
'Excel 2013:
' Workbooks AAA.xls, BBB.xls and CCC.xls appear in rapid succession.
' When execution ends:
' If Msgbox "Hi" is commented out, the focus is with CCC.xls.
' If Msgbox "Hi" is uncommented, the focus is with ScreenUpdatingTest.xls.
' AAA.xls, BBB.xls and CCC.xls are >>>NOT<<< open in the task bar.
' The message that we have switched back to ScreenUpdatingTest.xls appears in the status bar.
End Sub
Surely it is reasonable to expect that such functionality should remain consistent from one version to the next! Our applications in Excel 2003 had a professional, elegant user interface, and they behaved predictably, intuitively and robustly.
With Excel 2013, this is utterly trashed, with flickering, unpredictable behaviour (who knows what will get the focus?) and inefficiency (things are so much slower when the screen updates). With Office 2003 going out of support, vast numbers of people
in my company will be moving to Excel 2013 as Excel 2003 is decommissioned. I imagine the same will be happening in many other companies. We now find ourselves on the cusp of being dealt us a devastating blow due to ONE DYSFUNCTIONAL METHOD, and
we are desperate for a solution. A solution would either have to restore the former Excel 2003 functionality of ScreenUpdating, or it would have to introduce a new method which really does turn screen updating on or off without exception.
Please, HELP!
-Peter

Thanks for the input, Jim.
I don't think the Single Document Interface is contributing to the problem. Since installing Office 2013, Excel 2003 has also inherited a Single Document Interface - yet while it behaves like a charm, Excel 2013 behaves ineptly.
Whatever the reasons for the problem, the fact is that this functionality is now broken - one might even say catastrophically broken - and some sort of resolution is essential. It would be madness to allow something like this to have such a severe
impact on business operations.
My call for help is still out there, as loud as ever! BTW, I can send my example files, zipped, to anyone who might like to look at them.
Peter
Sydney, Australia

A question about screen updation of T61

Hi there
I got a question about screen updation.
Currently, my T61's screen is 14.1 XGA TFT 1028x768, and it can't work, thus I am considering to replace it with the better 14.1" SXGA+ LCD SCREEN .
However, I am a little concerned about the compatiblility problem, hence I just wonder whether the new SXGA+ screen can fit for my current T61 laptop or not?? Thanks a lot for your answers!
Regards
Peng

you can buy it from IBM parts, and it will then sure to work for your laptop.
Here is the manual that shows you how and what parts you need:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-67979.html
P.S. If you have warranty this upgrade will void your remaining laptop warranty, as the LCD is not CRU (customer replaceable unit).
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

Glance screen update for lumia 520

Why will 520 not get glance screen update..? Im aware tat both 720 n 520 chip set ram everything is same.. But y shld 520 users miss it?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I was told that the type of screen used on the 520 wasn't compatible with glance screen which could make sense as the screen is of noticeably lower quality than the one on the 620 and 720. So perhaps it wasn't possible to add that feature without it being a massive battery drainer.
I don't think they've withheld the feature just to make you buy a better model.

HT5422 How to get an better screen-update? The view on the remote Mac is nearly static.

How to get an better screen-update? The view on the remote Mac is nearly static.

You can try reducing the bit depth of the screen image via the slider in the upper-right of the Control window. If that doesn't help, you may just not have a sufficiently fast network connection to correctly handle the data transfer necessary. This is often the case if you're connecting across the Internet. What is your network speed between the administration system and the client?
Regards.

Luminary Micro OLED screen updates so slowly.

I am evaluating the Luminary Micro LM3s8962 Eval Board using the LabVIEW for ARM toolkit. I have created a global variable that represents a 128x96 pixel image that I then write pixel by pixel to the OLED Screen. It takes over ten minutes to write the final image to the screen.
Why is it taking so long, Am I doing something completly incorrect?
Any help with this problem or to hear from anyone else evaluating this board would great.
I have attached my VI below:
Attachments:
Display.vi ‏17 KB

Hi phil_dal,
At a first glace, I see one minor change that could drastically inprove your screen update rate. In your program, you have your innermost loop calling the Display Set Foreground subVI and the Display Draw Pixel subVI. I would recommend not updating your screen after accessing each individual pixel. (Wire a FALSE input into the Display Draw Pixel.) You can then update your screen once after all the pixels have been loaded by using the Display Update VI. Do this outside of both loops.
I hope this helps,
Kevin S.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

Threads shutdown screen updates

Hi.
I'm working on a web browser in java that asynchronously creates URL connections and downloads the data. The problem that I'm having is that while this download is going on, the standard UI threads seem completely locked out, and I cannot update the screen with a partial image or to display the progress on the download. I've tried setting the Thread priority for these new threads to Thread.MIN_PRIORITY, and explicitly calling Thread.currentThread().yield() after a data update, but the screen never updates. Interestingly though, if I add the same yield command in the read() method of my inputstream, I do get screen updates (although this has a tremendous hit on the performance of the downloading threads and is not a viable option)
Does anyone have any suggestions?

It sounds like your AWT thread is either deadlocking or is being kept busy with something too time-consuming to allow normal processing of GUI events and updates.

Us Draw/Picture vi's or 3D active-X to draw w/o screen update timing glitches?

For a visual component of a multisensory psychophysical task I need temporal precision. Should I use Draw/Picture vi's or 3D active-X to draw 2D objects w/o screen update timing glitches? How should I synchronize the screen presentation with analog in data streams (within 1 ms)? Should the loop involved in (drawing and) updating the display window be running in parallel to my data collection loop?

To answer your question, I would recommend using the LabVIEW display VIs as opposed to ActiveX objects if you are worried about the screen update rate from code to display. You can definitely benchmark the time required to run ActiveX code as compared to LabVIEW display VIs, but you cannot benchmark when the interface has actually updated. However, because ActiveX has an additional layer of communication, I would assume that this could potentially extend the time that this operation would take.
For your application as a whole, I also have other reservations about the timing requirements you have. Specifically, you might not be able to ensure that you have accurate correlation within 1 ms depending on the specifications of the machine and concurrent processes running. By this I mean that the screen update for any operation depends on how fast Windows can process the command to redraw the screen. If you have a slow machine, or a large amount of concurrent tasks for the processor, this timing will be more of an issue.
The ideal platform that I would suggest would be a Windows machine dedicated to the display of these images. You could then run the acquisition code on a real-time processor and use the Windows host as a time server. By doing this, you can then correlate the timestamps of a screen update with the DAQ timestamps. I hope this information is useful for you. Please post back if you have any further questions.
Mike D.
National Instruments
Applications Engineer

Quicktime player app causes screen updates to lag?

I notice gui refreshes are paused by 0.5 seconds every 20 seconds if quicktime player app is loaded.
Example: Load quicktime player app. Now drag a finder around continuously. On my system, every 20 seconds, the finder window will not follow the mouses movements for about 0.5 seconds. About 0.5 seconds after the pause, the window will start to follow the mouses movements again.
No movie needs to play. There is no load on the machine at all.
There are no errors reported in the system logs.
If I quit the app, the problem vanishes.
If i play movies using VLC, there is no lag at all.
OS X 10.6.1 Server
Mac Pro
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
Quad 2.94 Ghz
8 gigs rams.
1.2 terrabytes free disk space.
Message was edited by: Adam Chrystie

Ok so after a few rounds of lugging the computer to the Apple Store's genius bar. I narrowed the problem down to my Samsung synchMaster 244T monitor. This monitor works great with my MacBook Pro and linux machines but for some reason it causes my screen lags on the Mac Pro.
I bought an Apple Cinema display and the problem vanished!
Very odd.

Screen capture lag

When I try to take rapid fire screen captures (5-7 caps/sec) using the shortcut keys, only a 3-4 of these captures will show up on the desktop, and it generally takes 5-7 seconds for them to call show up. I never had a problem doing this until I reformatted/reinstalled snow leopard over the weekend - even when all programs are shut down this lag occurs. Any help with this problem would be greatly appreciated.
Spec:
MacBook 6,1 (Late '09 unibody)
Snow Leopard 10.6.8
2.26 Core 2 Duo
8GB 1067 MHz DDR3
750GB HDD
All available software updates have been installed.

How much hard drive space do you have left?
Trash the Finder plist file, repair permissions, restart your computer, empty the trash.

Finally Found a Solution to the Missing Palettes/No Screen update problem!

Ever since CS3 came out, Photoshop and Illustrator in particular (the worst offenders) wouldn't run properl
y on my system unless I did a full reboot before running either. Photoshop would load, but all palettes would be empty. Illustrator would forget t
o update the client area of the screen. Neither application was useable in that state. I have complained about it before, to no avail.
Now I have found the fix: Increasing the User Handle and GDI handle limits in Windows.
Here's an article on how to do this:
Increasing User Handle and GDI Handle Limits
Have you ever been working with a good number of applications at once? Are you a naturally born multi tasker? Alright, answer me this - who has had Windows buckle under the weight of all of these applications and display error messages stating that the system is out of memory or out of resources, buttons and menus do not work correctly, or you get an error sound but no message on the screen? I’ve hit this numerous times, to the point that I’ve lost work because of it…
(By the way, Adobe, can you please implement that little feature that Microsoft Office has had for years known as “auto save”? I don’t know how many times I’ve managed to completely max out Windows designing a web site and have had Photoshop fall over dead and disappear off my screen, only to find out that when I open Photoshop up again that the entire thing saved jack-all, all of those layers and documents gone poof into the void of darkness… if Microsoft can do it, why can’t you?)
Sometimes this happens even when you have a lot of system memory (RAM) still available. For instance, open up Internet Explorer and hold Ctrl+N to open up as many Internet Explorer windows as you can before menus, icons, and menus start displaying incorrectly, disappear, buttons aren’t clickable, etc. Close a few out and check your Windows Task Manager in the “Performance” tab, I bet you will find that a lot of your Physical Memory is still available.
This publication applies to:
    * Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
    * Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
    * Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
    * Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
    * Microsoft Windows XP Professional
    * Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
    * Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
    * Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
DISCLAIMER: mikedopp.com and mikedopp hold no responsibility or liability whatsoever should something go wrong, or if you incorrectly modify the Windows Registry. Please take extreme caution while following this publication and follow the steps correctly.
“Okie-dokie, if I have all of this memory still available, why is Windows saying I’m out of memory and out of system resources!?”
Simple. You have hit the “user handle” or “GDI handle” limit in Windows. This limit is there for two reasons:
    * Leaky applications or faulty code & malware can’t easily crash the system by attempting to overflow the system with GDI handles, making everything un-usable until a reboot is performed.
    * To prevent a user from opening up more applications than the system can handle.
If you have 1 gigabyte (or 1024MB) of RAM or higher, the default User Handle and GDI Handle limits can be pretty restrictive when running a large working set of applications that demand the most from your system and tax it heavily.
“Do you feel my pain?”
Yes, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this article that is more than likely a good 2 or 3 pages in length.
I’m a designer and coder, I use Adobe Photoshop with a lot of documents opened up - on top of that, I usually listen to music while working as it helps me work better, so Windows Media Player 10 is usually open on my machine. Also opened are Windows Messenger, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, SmartFTP (one of the best FTP clients I’ve ever used, highly recommended), Microsoft Word, a few dozen Internet Explorer windows, some Mozilla Firefox windows with a few tabs opened in each one, and EditPlus 2 for coding.
That’s a pretty heavy working set of applications, and I demand the most out of my computer when it comes to multitasking (I have a Pentium 4 2.66GHz, with 1.5GB of RAM just for those who are wondering).
I too have nailed these handle limits - more than once. After much searching and pondering I have finally come up with a working solution around this issue (hurray!)
“Yeah yeah, stop rambling and cut to the chase!”
First and foremost, I must warn you that modifying these settings incorrectly can render your Windows installation near useless. Also, depending on your computer configuration and the amount of RAM in your system, you may wish to play around with the numbers until you find a setting that is perfect for your computer.
To back up everything, open the Registry Editor (click on Start, Run, and then type “regedit.exe” (without the quotes).
To backup a registry key:
    * In the Registry Editor on the left hand side, you will see the navigation pane. Using your mouse or keyboard, navigate to the following subkeys:
    * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems
    * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
    * Right click on each of the subkeys above in the left hand pane and from the context menu that appears, choose the “Export” option. Save the exported registry data file where ever you wish, but make sure that it will be accessible should we need to restore the files.
“OK, I’ve backed everything up! Now what!?”
Don’t quit the Registry Editor just yet - we still need to make some modifications in order to increase the handle limits in Windows.
With the Registry Editor opened, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems. You will notice a set of “REG_MULTI_SZ” and “REG_EXPAND_SZ” keys in the right hand pane. The one that we are interested in modifying is called “Windows”.
To modify the key, double click on it. It should look something like this:
%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,3072,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16
The section of this string we are interested in modifting is “SharedSection”.
In the SharedSection part of the string you will notice 3 numbers. What we are interested in is the middle value, “3072?. Modify this value so that the middle number is “8192?.
It should look something like this after modifying the value:
   %SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,8192,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16
Now that we’ve changed this, lets continue, shall we?
In the left hand pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows. In the right hand side, you will see two REG_DWORD values, named “GDIProcessHandleQuota” and “USERProcessHandleQuota”. We will need to modify both of these.
The first key we will want to modify is “GDIProcessHandleQuota”. This keys value can be set between 256 and 16,384 (maximum), and the default value is 10,000. I’d recommend using 15,000 as a value for this key, however if you are doing a lot of multitasking, shoot for the stars and go with 16,384.
This key can not be set past 16,384 as it is the maximum acceptable value.
Now, lets modify “USERProcessHandleQuota”. This keys value can be set between 200 and 18,000 (maximum), with a default value of 10,000. I’d recommend increasing this value to the same number used with “GDIProcessHandleQuota”, however as previously mentioned if you are working with a hefty application workload, shoot for the stars and go wth the maximum value of 18,000.
This key can not be set past 18,000 as it is the maximum acceptable value.
Do NOT attempt to increase these values past the maximum - Windows will become very unstable and may even stop working correctly. If Windows starts acting up after changing these values, lower them until the issues are resolved, or restore the backups of these keys’ values that we created before making modifications.
Now that you’ve changed these values, restart your computer and tax the system using the Internet Explorer trick mentioned previously - open Internet Explorer and hold down Ctrl+N on your keyboard to open up new Internet Explorer windows. Continue this until menus, buttons, and user interface elements stop working correctly. Also, open any applications you run day-to-day while you are performing this, so that you can get more of an idea if you have everything configured correctly.
You may also want to monitor your memory usage and handles information in Task Manager to see whether or not the above registry values need any more modifications.
I hope this helps with any multi-tasking issues you may have run into while running Microsoft Windows, now get back to work!

You work like I do. It's very cool that you published this fix for XP people, but yow, what a lot of detailed things to check/set! Seems like it might just be simpler just to move up to Windows 7...
-Noel

Finally Found a Solution to the No Screen update problem!

Ever since CS3 came out, Photoshop and Illustrator in particular (the worst offenders) wouldn't run properl
y on my system unless I did a full reboot before running either. Photoshop would load, but all palettes would be empty. Illustrator would forget t
o update the client area of the screen. Neither application was useable in that state. I have complained about it before, to no avail.
Now I have found the fix: Increasing the User Handle and GDI handle limits in Windows.
Here's an article on how to do this:
Increasing User Handle and GDI Handle Limits
Have you ever been working with a good number of applications at once? Are you a naturally born multi tasker? Alright, answer me this - who has had Windows buckle under the weight of all of these applications and display error messages stating that the system is out of memory or out of resources, buttons and menus do not work correctly, or you get an error sound but no message on the screen? I’ve hit this numerous times, to the point that I’ve lost work because of it…
(By the way, Adobe, can you please implement that little feature that Microsoft Office has had for years known as “auto save”? I don’t know how many times I’ve managed to completely max out Windows designing a web site and have had Photoshop fall over dead and disappear off my screen, only to find out that when I open Photoshop up again that the entire thing saved jack-all, all of those layers and documents gone poof into the void of darkness… if Microsoft can do it, why can’t you?)
Sometimes this happens even when you have a lot of system memory (RAM) still available. For instance, open up Internet Explorer and hold Ctrl+N to open up as many Internet Explorer windows as you can before menus, icons, and menus start displaying incorrectly, disappear, buttons aren’t clickable, etc. Close a few out and check your Windows Task Manager in the “Performance” tab, I bet you will find that a lot of your Physical Memory is still available.
This publication applies to:
    * Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
    * Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
    * Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
    * Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
    * Microsoft Windows XP Professional
    * Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
    * Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
    * Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
DISCLAIMER: mikedopp.com and mikedopp hold no responsibility or liability whatsoever should something go wrong, or if you incorrectly modify the Windows Registry. Please take extreme caution while following this publication and follow the steps correctly.
“Okie-dokie, if I have all of this memory still available, why is Windows saying I’m out of memory and out of system resources!?”
Simple. You have hit the “user handle” or “GDI handle” limit in Windows. This limit is there for two reasons:
    * Leaky applications or faulty code & malware can’t easily crash the system by attempting to overflow the system with GDI handles, making everything un-usable until a reboot is performed.
    * To prevent a user from opening up more applications than the system can handle.
If you have 1 gigabyte (or 1024MB) of RAM or higher, the default User Handle and GDI Handle limits can be pretty restrictive when running a large working set of applications that demand the most from your system and tax it heavily.
“Do you feel my pain?”
Yes, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this article that is more than likely a good 2 or 3 pages in length.
I’m a designer and coder, I use Adobe Photoshop with a lot of documents opened up - on top of that, I usually listen to music while working as it helps me work better, so Windows Media Player 10 is usually open on my machine. Also opened are Windows Messenger, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, SmartFTP (one of the best FTP clients I’ve ever used, highly recommended), Microsoft Word, a few dozen Internet Explorer windows, some Mozilla Firefox windows with a few tabs opened in each one, and EditPlus 2 for coding.
That’s a pretty heavy working set of applications, and I demand the most out of my computer when it comes to multitasking (I have a Pentium 4 2.66GHz, with 1.5GB of RAM just for those who are wondering).
I too have nailed these handle limits - more than once. After much searching and pondering I have finally come up with a working solution around this issue (hurray!)
“Yeah yeah, stop rambling and cut to the chase!”
First and foremost, I must warn you that modifying these settings incorrectly can render your Windows installation near useless. Also, depending on your computer configuration and the amount of RAM in your system, you may wish to play around with the numbers until you find a setting that is perfect for your computer.
To back up everything, open the Registry Editor (click on Start, Run, and then type “regedit.exe” (without the quotes).
To backup a registry key:
    * In the Registry Editor on the left hand side, you will see the navigation pane. Using your mouse or keyboard, navigate to the following subkeys:
    * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems
    * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
    * Right click on each of the subkeys above in the left hand pane and from the context menu that appears, choose the “Export” option. Save the exported registry data file where ever you wish, but make sure that it will be accessible should we need to restore the files.
“OK, I’ve backed everything up! Now what!?”
Don’t quit the Registry Editor just yet - we still need to make some modifications in order to increase the handle limits in Windows.
With the Registry Editor opened, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems. You will notice a set of “REG_MULTI_SZ” and “REG_EXPAND_SZ” keys in the right hand pane. The one that we are interested in modifying is called “Windows”.
To modify the key, double click on it. It should look something like this:
%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,3072,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16
The section of this string we are interested in modifting is “SharedSection”.
In the SharedSection part of the string you will notice 3 numbers. What we are interested in is the middle value, “3072?. Modify this value so that the middle number is “8192?.
It should look something like this after modifying the value:
   %SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,8192,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16
Now that we’ve changed this, lets continue, shall we?
In the left hand pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows. In the right hand side, you will see two REG_DWORD values, named “GDIProcessHandleQuota” and “USERProcessHandleQuota”. We will need to modify both of these.
The first key we will want to modify is “GDIProcessHandleQuota”. This keys value can be set between 256 and 16,384 (maximum), and the default value is 10,000. I’d recommend using 15,000 as a value for this key, however if you are doing a lot of multitasking, shoot for the stars and go with 16,384.
This key can not be set past 16,384 as it is the maximum acceptable value.
Now, lets modify “USERProcessHandleQuota”. This keys value can be set between 200 and 18,000 (maximum), with a default value of 10,000. I’d recommend increasing this value to the same number used with “GDIProcessHandleQuota”, however as previously mentioned if you are working with a hefty application workload, shoot for the stars and go wth the maximum value of 18,000.
This key can not be set past 18,000 as it is the maximum acceptable value.
Do NOT attempt to increase these values past the maximum - Windows will become very unstable and may even stop working correctly. If Windows starts acting up after changing these values, lower them until the issues are resolved, or restore the backups of these keys’ values that we created before making modifications.
Now that you’ve changed these values, restart your computer and tax the system using the Internet Explorer trick mentioned previously - open Internet Explorer and hold down Ctrl+N on your keyboard to open up new Internet Explorer windows. Continue this until menus, buttons, and user interface elements stop working correctly. Also, open any applications you run day-to-day while you are performing this, so that you can get more of an idea if you have everything configured correctly.
You may also want to monitor your memory usage and handles information in Task Manager to see whether or not the above registry values need any more modifications.
I hope this helps with any multi-tasking issues you may have run into while running Microsoft Windows, now get back to work!

You work like I do. It's very cool that you published this fix for XP people, but yow, what a lot of detailed things to check/set! Seems like it might just be simpler just to move up to Windows 7...
-Noel

Screen update lag

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