Specifications

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Chapter 15 Video Hardware
Table 15.16 Using Graphics Acceleration Settings to Troubleshoot Windows XP
Acceleration Setting When to Use Effect of Setting Long-Term Solution
Left* The display works in There’s no acceleration. Update display, DirectX,
Safe or VGA mode and mouse drivers.
but is corrupted in
other modes.
One click from left* 2D and 3D graphics It disables all but basic Update display, DirectX,
driver problems; mouse acceleration. and mouse drivers.
driver problems.
Two clicks from left* 3D acceleration It disables DirectX, Update DirectX drivers.
problems. DirectDraw, and
Direct 3D acceleration
(mainly used by
3D games).
Two clicks from right* Display driver It disables cursor and Update display drivers.
problems. drawing accelerations.
One click from right* Mouse pointer It disables mouse and Update mouse drivers.
corruption. pointer acceleration.
Right Normal operation. It enables full acceleration. N/A
*Disable write combining, which is a method for speeding up screen display, whenever you select any setting other
than full acceleration to improve stability. Reenable write combining after you install updated drivers and retry.
Table 15.17 Using Graphics Acceleration Settings to Troubleshoot Other Windows
Versions
Mouse Pointer
Location When to Use Effects of Setting Long-Term Solution
Left Display works in Safe or It disables all Update display and
VGA mode, but it is acceleration. mouse drivers.
corrupted in other modes.
One click from left 2D and 3D graphics driver Basic acceleration Update display and
problems, mouse driver only. mouse drivers.
problems.
One click from right Mouse pointer corruption. It disables mouse Update mouse drivers.
pointer acceleration.
Right Normal operation. Full acceleration. N/A
If you’re not certain of which setting is the best for your situation, use this procedure: Move the slider
one notch to the left to address mouse display problems by disabling the hardware’s cursor support in
the display driver. This is the equivalent of adding the
SWCursor=1 directive to the [Display] section
of the
System.ini file in Windows 9x/Me.
If you are having problems with 2D graphics in Windows XP only, but 3D applications work correctly,
move the slider to the second notch from the right to disable cursor drawing and acceleration.
Moving the slider another notch (to the third notch from the right in Windows XP or the second
notch from the right in earlier versions) prevents the adapter from performing certain bit-block trans-
fers; it disables 3D functions of DirectX in Windows XP. With some drivers, this setting also disables
memory-mapped I/O. This is the equivalent of adding the
Mmio=0 directive to the [Display] section
of
System.ini and the SafeMode=1 directive to the [Windows] section of Win.ini (and the SWCursor
directive mentioned previously) in Windows 9x/Me.
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