Multiple Screen redraws

[djlane]

Hi,

I'm having a really annoying issue with FM8 redrawing the screen multiple times. If I just click on the windows taskbar my FM8 screen will redraw itself sometimes 6 or 7 times !

I have now noticed that the redrawing is reduced and eventually eliminated by closing other applications. If nothing else is running, the redraws don't happen. But its impractical to have to close everything just to run FM.

If I have another application in my active window, I can see my FM8 screen in the background busily redrawing itself over and over continuously.

If I click on an FM menu option, I might get 3 or 4 redraws before the menu item I clicked on is activated.

Even in layout mode it redraws over and over.

Any idea what is causing this?

My laptop is 1.8ghz / 1gb RAM, with a GEforce 6600 128mb video card. So I don't think PC performance is the issue... so why does it only happen when other applications are open??

[sbg2]

Funny, I just started experiencing this with FM v7 yesterday. I wonder if this has to do with a recent Win XP update or if FM is the problem.

[Tim W]

V. 7 & V. 8 have updates to 7.03 & 8.03, but I don't think this is the problem. How are the layouts called, via a script?

You could find a script step or steps creating something like you have described. I have seen it in files converted from version 5.5 to 8.

Might be one place to look.

Tim

[djlane]

Hi Tim,

It happens regardless how the layouts are called.

Lets say I'm looking at an FM8 screen. I just move my cursor to the Windows taskbar (no clicking!), and the FM8 screen will start redrawing, anywhere from 1 or 2 up to 5 or even 6 times.

The same thing happens if I use the FM toolbar on the left of ythe screen to switch between layouts - although that usually produces only a couple of redraws.

I thought it might be related to displaying calculations, so I created a layout with no calcs - the result is the same.

It only happens in FM8. This is a converted solution from FM6, and there are no screen redraw issues there.

[djlane]

Guys,

I found out how to stop the redrawing (and also apparently FLASHING!). CTRL-ALT-DEL then set the FM Process priority to HIGH, then the redrawing and flashing stops immediately.

Anyone know if there a way to always start FM with high priority ?

cheers

david

[djlane]

To Start FM8 with Above Normal Priority, which stops screen redraws and flashing, modify the target in the FM8 Desktop icon as follows

C:WINDOWSsystem32cmd.exe /c start "Filemaker 8 Pro" /abovenormal "c:Program FilesFileMakerFileMaker Pro 8FileMaker Pro.exe"

You can use "high" instead of "abovenormal" to set the FM process to high priority, but abovenormal seems to be good enough. DO NOT set to realtime.

From xona.com (http://xona.com/2004/07/22.html)