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Screen Flickering |
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Problem The user reports that the screen is "flickering" or "flashing". Usually they mean the icons at the lower left corner of the data entry windows, but they may describe it as elsewhere on the screen. This only seems to happen on some monitors. It usually is reported on flat-screen LCD monitors, though it may also occur on CRT monitors. It seems to affect about 10% or 20% of Windows users (we have never seen it here). NOTE-- There was a bug in Goldenseal accounting software version 2.9 and earlier where there was a lot of flickering when the mouse was over the 'book' browser control. That happened on almost any monitor. Diagnosis Ask them which part of the screen is flashing. 1. If it's the lower left corner of a data entry window, it's caused by help messages drawing 'behind' the icons there. 2. If elsewhere, it's often caused by #1-- some LCD monitors seem to 'bleed' images horizontally or vertically. 3. We've heard one or two reports of general flickering or "lightning" on the monitor. Solution 1. To remove the messages, choose Preferences from the Options menu, and choose Interface from the submenu. Change the Help Messages popup field to either Never or With Modifier Key. Click OK. They can also make the window bigger so the help message is not behind the icons. 2. The solution to #1 still will help. 3. This is probably just a general hardware problem, maybe triggered by the redraw of the help fields (one of our laptops here gets "heat lightning" white streaks during hot weather). Log in a bug report for any users who don't see improvement after help message are turned off. Technical Note These problems don't occur on Macintosh. Our Windows drawing code uses QuickTime to "translate" some calls to Windows. That may be the culprit for some of these screen-update problems. Windows in general seems more likely to flash or do extra redraws, as compared to the Mac. We have looked through our code several times, but haven't found anything that would directly cause any screen flashing. Comments Entered 1/29/05 by Casey. Revised 9/24/08 by Dennis. |
