Black flash using certain features

P

pj1115

Active Member
Hey

I have a Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Keyboard 8000 (awesome), and an MS Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 (cool), both of which can be configured to take advantage of the magnify accessibility feature in Vista. I'm not sure whether the keyboard/mouse magnify feature is the same or different to the inbuilt Vista one, but I assume my problem comes from the the peripherals.

The thing that has puzzled me since I started using it (Vista Business), is that whenever I use the magnify feature on them, the screen flashes black for a second, then returns with the magnifier open. It doesn't happen when I stop the magnification. This also occurs when I'm prompted by UAC.

At first I thought that because this is a business machine, and lacks a real graphics card (even though it's devilishly powerful), perhaps these flashes were due to that. Strangely enough though, when using the feature on an XP installation, this doesn't happen. I updated all my drivers on Vista, re-installed intellitype and intellipoint, and it still happens.

Ugh. I was unable to find a similar problem when Google'ing. Anyone have any ideas?
 
The UAC black flash is part of Vista and nothing to do with your hardware. It's something to do with entering and exiting protected mode, and also happens with some software that takes control of the monitor (like Redshift 5 on my system), so I guess the magnify software does the same.
(does AeroGlass disappear temporarily too ?, and revert to opaque window borders ? )
 
As Terry says, it's part of the OS.

Most likely it's Vista having problems changing the gamma settings when at the secure desktop.
 
Same thing happens if you use a program that does not support the Vista modified color theme. In my case Toshiba DVD player will make the creen flash black and revert to the original color theme.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Terry60 said:
(does AeroGlass disappear temporarily too ?, and revert to opaque window borders ? )
Click to expand...
Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. The only reversion of borders happened when I maximised a window. This annoyed me because the taskbar also changed -- so I took out old the ol' hex editor, tinkered a little with Aero and now maximization doesn't ruin the transparency.
If you mean does the window style revert to Vista Basic for a short as well as the flash, no it does not.

After some exploring, I found the option to disable protected mode for UAC elevation. Do you think this is a big security risk?
 
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