www.virtualacorn.co.uk/forum

I'm getting a bit fed up with VRPC-SE on my PC laptop (XP2); to the point where I feel it's virtually unusable for any serious work.

The mouse pointer sticks or pauses every other second for a fraction of a second. This means that any precision mouse movements take ages (like selecting menu items) because you have to wait to see where the pointer will end up.

In addition, when I type, characters are missed every other second. It's very frustrating. It's as though the whole system freezes for a split second - every other second.

Processor in the laptop is an AMD Athlon 1600+ (which I think runs at 927Mhz).

I have installed Select 4.39 without any problems. However, I can't pinpoint when this started.

Any ideas/experience of this would be appreciated.

TIA

Firstly if you have an older VRPC make sure that the VRPC sound is disabled (see the manual). Having disabled VRPC sound (not the same as disabling RISC OS sound) quit and re-load VRPC, is this any better.

If so then get all the updates from the downloads section of the VirtualAcorn website and apply them following the instructions, do not cherry pick upgrades, they must be installed in the right order. Now turn sound back on again and see how it behaves.

Also see what else is running on the PC, something could easily be hogging processor cyles and interfering with VRPC, for example InCD and Quicktime have caused problems in the past.

I bought my copy at Wakefield this year. It has serial no. 11030-VRP so unless I've mis-read the download page I believe it should have all the upgrades (except Internet 6.11)

I'll try disabling sound anyway to see if this makes any diference.

I do have InCD software on the laptop, it starts automatically and the icon on the task bar doesn't have an option to exit or close it.

Anyway, will have a fiddle with it and report back.

Thanks for your prompt suggestions.

Right... I've had a fiddle. Turning sound off has no effect.

I've looked at the system processes in the Task Manager and there is a process called Njeeves.exe taking approx. 20-30% of CPU time. This is the only thing I can see that might be causing the problem. I believe the task is part of Norman Anti Virus software.

As I mentioned above, I do have InCD installed but wouldn't know how to stop it! What sort of problems can it cause?

Try Selecting NJeeves and clicking on "End Process", then try VRPC again. InCD can cause VRPC to run badly, we have never found out why, but on a couple of machines that suffered from sticky mouse pointers and unrepsonsive keyboards getting rid of InCD solved the problem.

InCD may be loaded from your startup group.

Thanks for your suggestions Aaron. When I ended Njeeves I couldn't get VRPC to run at all. However, I've solved the problem by changing my AV software to Norton, and now VRPC runs as smooth as silk. (InCD is still running but doesn't interfere on my machine)

Once again, thanks and all the best for the festive season.