Slowness in repainting and scrolling

Question

OK. I probably know everything about repainting and paint that you know. Just trust me there :). so this isn't a newbie "why is my redraw slow" question. I am interested to hear from anyone who has noticed this or who, after reading this, notices that it explains their situation.
First I'll give you the symptom, then I'll give you the cure for the symptom then I'll ask about the disease, then present some evidence that it's not such a simple problem.
Symptom- very slow redrawing and scrolling.
Cure- stop running certain other programs which are essentially non-malware TSRs (Terminate and Stay Resident) programs. In my particular case, its FastStone's capture utility but I am pretty sure it's not specific to that program.
The disease- it only manifests itself while doing plain old launches from the development environment - in other words, write any simple GUI app in your development environment and launch it while running the TSR, as opposed to say, java programs like IntelliJ or Netbeans which have full installers etc. It does effect FreeMind however.
Some clues:
I have to say it's not the amount of memory, since the smallest GUI tester program run via a PSVM (public static void main) will elicit the effect and anyways my machine has a disgusting amount of RAM.
The effect of closing (or opening the TSR) is instantaneous. There's a clear cause and effect at work.
It does not effect Netbeans that I can tell nor IntelliJ (just to stay concrete). It devastates FreeMind and any stupid little GUI tester, as I said.
It does not effect non- Java programs.
So here is my thinking. Suppose there's something that windows programs can tap into- some resource, function call, whatever, that has the side effect (MS would never do this deliberately) of really undermining the Java VM in some way or forcing resources away from it.. it feels like a resource starvation scenario of some sort-- either CPU or RAM or thread priority or whatever.
On top of the why does this happen question, there's the why are some Java programs immune question. It makes me think there's something about the way those programs are installed or launched that's different from the plain old PSVM that makes them immune. AFAIK, PSVM is how things are ultimately launched in Java, period, after all the scripts and whatever have run.
So I am asking
does anyone notice this themselves?
is this a well known problem that other people know the solution to and understand?
now that I've described it in the way I have, does it shed light on any mysteries that anyone else has?
Really just trying to spark a discussion / line of investigation.
many thanks.

Answer 1

So here is my thinking. Suppose there's something that windows programs can tap into- some resource, function call, whatever, that has the side effect (MS would never do this deliberately) of really undermining the Java VM in some way or forcing resources away from it.. it feels like a resource starvation scenario of some sort-- either CPU or RAM or thread priority or whatever.
I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, and MS being the butt of the folly makes it even better, but I don't think so. I have not noticed that my Java applications over the last 10 years have been affected any more or less than any "native code application" (such as those developed in C/C++ or .Net and compiled specifically for the MS environment.
On top of the why does this happen question, there's the why are some Java programs immune question. It makes me think there's something about the way those programs are installed or launched that's different from the plain old PSVM that makes them immune. AFAIK, PSVM is how things are ultimately launched in Java, period, after all the scripts and whatever have run.
I would have to say, some Java applications are immune probably because their structure is better for that specific environment.
So I am asking
does anyone notice this themselves?
My system degradations seem to be non-discriminatory and even several of the MS products suffer way more than any of the Java based applications.
is this a well known problem that other people know the solution to and understand?
now that I've described it in the way I have, does it shed light on any mysteries that anyone else has?
Not really, the MS bloat-ware that I run seem to suffer the symptoms you have described too. As do other companies' products equally.
I had part of the problem explained to me one time by a Senior Engineer from Digital, concerning OLE: You have a cooperative interface standard that asks one company to expose their proprietary interfaces so other companies can gain from their use. Not everyone will share nor will what they share always be totally accurate. It's just not viewed as being in their best interest to give it all away.