Slow screen redraw in windows

[Answers]

Slow Screen Redraw Windows machines -Help!

We have a database thats been used for almost 2 years. It's in Filemaker 9 and it had been working fine. It's running on Windows XP machines (the file server using filemaker server advanced). I connect remotely through VPN to make changes occassionally to layouts etc.. My home computer is a macbook pro. Every since last week all of a sudden all the windows machines are extremely sloooooooooooooooow,whether they connect off site or on site, the screen redraws constantly. When I connect with my mac it's fine. I can't figure out what's wrong. It's all the pcs that it's slow one. Making it practically unusable.

As I said everything was working fine up til a week ago. Any changes that were made were minor changes to reports. I don't get it... my mac works fine though.

[Mike D.]

Is it possible that the PCs automatically receive software updates from Microsoft? Maybe one of those updates caused a problem.

Just an idea...

[mr_vodka]

It may be a Windows patch. Check out the latest patch details from their site.

[Josh Ormond]

Try adjusting the hardware acceleration in Display Properties/Settings (tab)/Advanced/Troubleshoot (tab). Keep turning it down until the problem goes away. If you get to none, but still have the problem, try updating the graphics drivers on the pc.

One of the recent updates did the same thing to one of our machines. It is related to the CPU's ability to redraw, and also the Graphics Card/Processor.

[GuyJeb]

I have the same issue with our Users. I recently Googled "File maker pro 9 slowness" in Firefox and found http://www.experts-exchange.com/. Most of us know it is a pay site, however with Firefox you are able to view the "pay for Answers" at the bottem. If you have firefox, open up this link:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Apple/Software/Filemaker_Pro/Q_23567994.html

Otherewise...

The problem was:

We just converted an old system, as is, from FM5.5 to FM Pro 9. The smallest of all the files is the Timecard file. The Timecard table has 70 repeating fields, 14 of which are calculations. In addition it has 28 other calculation fields 14 of which are unstored. The only form takes a solid minute to load on a stand alone computer, and over a minute on the server. Paging through each time sheet takes about 5 seconds per timesheet (The form is in List View). I tried changing the form to Form View and while it pages faster, loading is still about the same. I think the issue is with the repeating fields, but cannot be sure as I have never worked with repeating fields.

It does have an open script which I removed to see it that would improve things, but it did not.

There are only 11 rows in the database. (It does not accumulate timesheets).

Can anyone tell me why the slow load, and if it is the repeating fields why they have that impact???

I can't think of anything else, but if you need more information, please ask!

And the Accepted solution is:

got it.

it is simply a font problem: in design mode change fonts for all blocks for a present one. yr file has probably been done with a font which does not exist anymore under win or osX, like NewYork or Chicago. Simply replace by anything, and it will run.

why is it so slow in this case? because fm replaces it with a bitmap image: always slow to display.

and it is even worst /windows than /osX.

Hope it helps. I'm about to find out in a few hours if it was the issue with ours.

-Jeb