How come whole screen blinks when cropping?

RP
Posted By
Rosie_Perera
May 25, 2007
Views
225
Replies
3
Status
Closed
Using Photoshop CS2: Sometimes when I am using the cropping tool, if I hold down the mouse button and drag out a cropping rectangle, but leave the mouse motionless for too long in one place, the entire clipping rectangle goes wonky and the screen flashes, and all of the palettes go blank. I’m not sure what is taking place. If I keep dragging and let go the mouse, the cropping seems to work as normal. But the flashing of the screen is very unsettling. It seems intentional, and yet if I hold move the mouse a bit and then continue holding the button down for a couple of seconds without moving it, the blinking screen happens again and even more of the Photoshop UI gets blanked out (e.g., the photo I’m working on at the moment). Is this a bug, or is it some feature I’m not aware of? It is not consistently reproducible, so I suspect it might be a bug.
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DM
dave_milbut
May 25, 2007
sounds like either a video or mouse driver bug. what os? what mouse? what vid card?
RP
Rosie_Perera
May 25, 2007
It’s a relatively new machine (Summer 2006) which came with all the equipment and drivers installed.

OS: Win XP, SP 2
Mouse: Dell optical USB mouse
Mouse driver: hidusb.sys, version 5.1.2600.0, 9/11/2006
Video card: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS
Resolution: 1280 x 1024
Video driver: nv4_disp.dll or nv4_mini.sys (both are listed in system info, not sure which is in use), version: 6.14.10.8440, 8/11/2004

The latter looks like an old date, perhaps I should try upgrading the driver. But this happens so intermittently — once every 3 or 4 months — that it would be a long time before I could be convinced the problem had gone away. I don’t know of a consistent way to reproduce it. Was just wondering if anyone else had seen this. I used to think it was a feature I just didn’t know about (some special mode you get into if you hold the mouse button down more than a couple of seconds while cropping), but now that I’ve seen how bad it can mess up the screen sometimes, I’m convinced it’s a bug, whether it be in Photoshop or one of the drivers.
DM
dave_milbut
May 25, 2007
It’s a relatively new machine (Summer 2006) which came with all the equipment and drivers installed.

drivers are often outdated on new machines before they’re delivered to the customer. take a look at nvidia or ati’s drivers list. sometimes only days or a week go by before a new version (with bug fixes) are out.

obviously i can’t tell you what to do, but if it were me, i’d update every driver i could get at on the system.

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