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    Desktop Background Goes Black After Switching Between Stamina and Speed Modes

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by FrinkTL, Mar 31, 2010.

  1. FrinkTL

    FrinkTL Notebook Evangelist

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    Has anyone else noticed this?

    I have my destop wallpaper/background set to change every 30 minutes, pulling from the entire picture library (which is a few gigabytes). I have noticed that every now and then...say, maybe 10-20% of the time. The desktop background goes completely black after the switch. This happens whether the switch is set to Auto or I manually flip the switch (which makes sense, actually).

    The only thing that restores the picture to view is logging off and back on. None of the following have any impact or cause the picture to display:
    • Right-clicking on the desktop and selecting "Next desktop background"
    • Setting focus to the desktop and selecting F5 (Refresh)
    • Changing the Theme or manually selecting a different desktop background
    I'm going to guess that this is a graphics driver issue, but since there's no new driver available (at least, not on Sony's Support site), I guess the work-around will have to do for now. Still, it's pretty annoying, since I'm plugging and unplugging my Z all the time.
     
    FrinkTL, Mar 31, 2010
    #1
  2. beaups

    beaups New Jack Hustler

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    in vaio control panel make sure you don't have the "battery saving wallpaper" or whatever they call it turned on. I bet you do.
     
    beaups, Mar 31, 2010
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  3. FrinkTL

    FrinkTL Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks for replying...so far you're the only one...BUT....that isn't it. No battery saving wallpaper is set.

    Keep in mind that this is an intermittent issue; it doesn't happen every time the Z switches modes. It only happens about 1-2 times out of every 10 times that I switch modes. The really odd thing to me is that logging out and back in (without changing modes) causes the background to re-display.

    Very VERY odd. :confused:
     
    FrinkTL, Apr 1, 2010
    #3
  4. Nautis

    Nautis Switchable Graphics Guy

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    Does seem odd. What wallpaper are you using?
     
    Nautis, Apr 1, 2010
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  5. beaups

    beaups New Jack Hustler

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    Soooo...just happened to me. Along with it is a nice error event viewer stating nvidia driver stopped responding and recovered.

    I think occasionally the driver crashes when switching from integrated to discrete. The side effect is black desktop.
     
    beaups, Apr 1, 2010
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  6. FrinkTL

    FrinkTL Notebook Evangelist

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    All sorts. Personal 5 Megapixel pictures mostly. All of them JPEG files. Doesn't seem to be a function of what the picture is.
     
    FrinkTL, Apr 1, 2010
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  7. RazorJimmy

    RazorJimmy Notebook Enthusiast

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    Same problem here
     
    RazorJimmy, Jun 25, 2010
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  8. peekb

    peekb Newbie

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    I get this as well. I've found that setting the display to 16-bit and then back to 32-bit color will fix it. Annoying...
     
    peekb, Jul 31, 2010
    #8