Strange mouse behavior on an LCD monitor

[Foxbat]

After having waited long enough for LCD technology to improve to an acceptable level of performance, I finally upgraded my Win98SE computer's monitor from a CRT to a Dell U2413 professional level IPS. I compared the latency between both monitors side by side, and the LCD lags a bit as expected. However, there was an unexpected weird behavior with the mouse pointer on the LCD. There's the expected slight lag, but moving it around the screen, it appeared to have a floating feeling, as if a smoothing filter was applied to the mouse movement. No such option exist in the mouse settings. Mouse acceleration is off. If I click and drag a window around the screen, the pointer does not exactly follow the window where one would expect the pointer to be. Same thing happens with scrollbars, or dragging anything around which provide an object of reference.

I though maybe it was the input lag. I use IPS and TN monitors all the time, at work, in school, and at home. I have a cheap TN that is connected to another computer and an LCD TV connected to my brother's computer. LCD TVs are notorious for terrible input lag, yet there was no floating mouse phenomenon. This only happens on my Win98SE computer with this monitor.

To eliminate some factors, production models of the U2413 from the first two years had problems with ghosting and overshoot, which has been resolved in the latest revision, and is unrelated to this problem. The U2413 has a game mode that makes it one of the fastest IPS monitors, making the display lag performance as Class 1 in an in-depth review by TFT Central. Activating game mode doesn't fix it. Tried swapping different mice, optical or laser, high or low DPI, PS/2 or USB, and it's still there.

Searching for a solution, I found something that might explain this behavior. According to this condition, the GPU renders the mouse pointer separately from the rest of the screen. It is usually not apparent in CRTs, but sometimes, the floating mouse behavior appears on an LCD. Some users experiencing this issue reported it to be resolved if the hardware acceleration slider is moved one step to the left, while others needed to completely turn it off. I tried it, and it did not help. Anyone recognize this problem?

My configuration:
PIII 1Ghz
Windows 98SE
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 with 56.64 drivers
NUSB 3.6e
KernelEx 4.5.2

[Drugwash]

Maybe related or maybe not: what brand exactly is your videocard? I'm asking because I have such card myself, the Ti4200 AGP8X model made by MSI and the latest driver I could use is the MSI-provided 45.32 from their site. Any official NVIDIA driver later than that would completely disable AGP texture (check in DxDiag if yours is enabled).

It's possible that this particular card model and/or particular manufacturers may require specific drivers to function properly. Therefore my advice would be for you to check if there are any manufacturer-specific drivers for your card model at the manufacturer's site and perform a test with those. Or if you have the original drivers CD you could try those too, if only to rule out this possible issue.

 

I'm using my card with the MSI 45.32 drivers on an 667MHz Pentium III (+KernelEx 4.5.2, AutoPatcher98 with updated DirectX 9.0c, RP9.7.2 and many other updates) on a Yakumo 17XF8 TFT monitor and there is no lag whatsoever, the cursor is stuck where it should be when dragging windows around. Granted it's a VGA connection, not DVI.

[pangoomis]

Try different graphic drivers, or if you can, try different graphic cards.

About the AGP Texture Acceleration in DxDiag: http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-009689.htm and https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/810772

It seems it's not needed at all, and is just for the show.

Edited August 15, 2015 by MrMateczko

[Drugwash]

Well, M$ as always have been trying to minimalize things (and Intel follows suit). At the time, I was trying to update the video driver for my card in order to be able to play one of the 'Tomb raider' series games and that game was unable to detect available resolutions/color depth and other video-related options because of misfit drivers. So the driver does matter a lot.

Anyway, I offered this personal example more on the lines of "if that visible issue happened, who knows what other hidden issues may arise with a misfit driver". Mouse lag included. So certain tests are required in order to narrow down or pinpoint the issue.

 

Nonetheless, thank you for taking the time to search and publish the links above.

 

(fingers pressing buttons when brains are not there…)

Edited August 15, 2015 by Drugwash

[Foxbat]

Thanks for the replies.

 

Checked DxDiag and AGP Texture Acceleration is enabled. I have DirectX 9.0c, Dec. 2006 release.

 

I don't have a spare graphics card available, and there's no integrated graphics on the mobo, so no hardware swapping can be done.

 

My card is an ASUS AGP4X using the reference drivers. I'll try out the ASUS drivers.

 

[Foxbat]

Installed and tested the ASUS drivers. No improvement on the mouse problem. The drivers were a little bloated, so I went back to the reference drivers.

 

Might have to let this sit for a little bit and come back to it when I have more time.

[Drugwash]

You may have to edit and install the drivers provided by Dell. And while at that, tell the id!ots at Dell that "installation" (in Source Disk Names section) has two As so they should better revise their inf files in the package.

Honestly, I wouldn't buy Dell - all my experience with such hardware was at least frustrating but mostly aggravating. And limiting a MONITOR (!!!) usage to a narrow range of operating systems is simply moronic.

[Foxbat]

I called Dell tech support. They searched through their knowledge base and haven't found anything related to this. All they could come up with was some kind of compatibility problem between the OS and monitor. Due a lack of data for this monitor and Win98SE, they couldn't pin it on anything else.

 

All that's left to do is to try and see if I could modify the drivers to work with Win98SE, if I can get it work at all. I am using the monitor on Windows 7 without any drivers, and it doesn't have that problem.

[Drugwash]

If you're using the DVI connection it's possible that the EDID is not correctly read or processed by 98SE. I've had a hard time getting a Hanns-G Hi221 monitor work at native resolution (1680x1050) even under XP-SP3 because of this and had to create custom resolutions in NVIDIA's control panel despite having installed the very-hard-to-find driver, so installing a driver may or may not work for you but you'll have to try this just to be sure. Just change signature to "$CHICAGO$", comment out the services sections as they don't exist in 9x and you're all set.

 

I believe there are tools that can modify a monitor's EDID data through reflashing but it's a complicated and dangerous operation so I wouldn't advise to try that unless you can afford to lose the monitor.

[jaclaz]

EDID related (maybe useful, maybe not)

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172888-blurry-screen/

 

jaclaz

[Foxbat]

Thanks for the ideas. Every little bit helps. I haven't had any success in getting the system to recognize the modifed inf. It probably wouldn't do much anyway since Windows is already aware that a Dell U2413 is connected, and recognized its native resolution without the drivers.

 

There's a possiblity that it could be somewhat EDID related since I am not connected via VGA, but instead of the OS, it could be the monitor not getting the return signal. The U2413 is completely digital and does not include VGA or DVI-A connections. Win98SE is connected via DVI-D, Win7 via Display Port, and changed via an input selector. I've done some more testing, and found what could be a possible explanation why the problem occurs. If I boot up Win98SE system first, the floating mouse behavior appears on the monitor. If I later boot up the Win7 system and switch input to it, Win7 inherits the problem, and remains that way. However, if I boot Win7 first, there is no floating mouse problem, and if I later boot up and switch to the Win98SE system, it stays problem free there too. Note that power must be completely cut to the monitor at the surge protector in order for this to work (a monitor cold boot if you will), otherwise, the monitor will remember the inherited problem from a previous Win98SE boot and keep it that way.

 

I think the monitor is not receiving the proper communication from Win98SE on DVI, and thus, it operates in some form of compatibility mode. When Win7 sends the proper signal to the monitor from a monitor cold boot, everyting is all fine and dandy if I switch over to Win98SE. However, booting up another system if I only want to use 98 is just silly. While this is not a solution, maybe it can lead to one.

[jumper]

Connect the Win7 system via DVI (and the SE via Display Port if possible).

[Foxbat]

Win98SE is using a GeForce4 Ti 4200, which only has VGA and DVI connections. DVI is the only choice here.

[jumper]

(So a Display Port to DVI or VGA adapter would be needed, but....)

The point was to connect the Win7 system to the monitor via DVI to see if it's a problem with the DVI input on the monitor.

[Foxbat]

Checked Win7 with DVI. No problem there.