High CPU Load, Buttons Fail to Respond, White box / square around logo's

guino · 03-20-2005, 01:10 PM

Those three problems are very much related. The solution is the same (Fix the flash player):

NOTICE: There seems to be an incompatibility with FLASH 9 and many of the existing flash files on the internet, including many of those used by some skins, at this time I recommend using version 7 or 8 please review procedure below to get it installed:

-Open internet explorer, (DO NOT USE any other browser but Internet explorer, or the flash will not install correctly for windows)
-Go to Adobe's website
-Update your Flash Player

Alternatively you can simply download and install this file:

http://www.macromedia.com/go/full_flashplayer_win_ie
(greatly useful if you have no internet in your car)

ONCE THE ABOVE IS DONE:

-Download Flash.zip (Attached here)
-Unzip it into Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash
-Open that folder above
-Rename Flash9.ocx to Flash-9.ocx (or anything else)
-Rename Flash8.ocx (that came from the zip file), to Flash9.ocx

When you run RR, it should work fine with the flash files that were not working.

Note: Flash is OPTIONAL. If you use a non-flash skin you should not have those issues.

guino · 06-24-2005, 02:06 PM

High CPU load, Choppy or Slow flash playback AFTER latest flash installed

I recently rebuilt one of my machines at home and since I typically test RR on different machines this one was no exception. Basically, everything worked out flawless, first time (including de video which was the cause of rebuldin the machine). Now to the interesting part: I noticed that in this machine, RR was using about 5% CPU when IDLE (song scroll and flash logo rotating in main menu with music playing). The same state typically runs at 0-1% on my other machines. Now, I knew I had all the latest video drivers and the latest flash player and video playback (DVD/DivX etc) was perfectly fine, so that's when it stroke me that Flash doesn't use ANY hardware/graphics acceleration for drawing images, so it had to be something basic.. so I set the screen to a 16Bit color resolution and tried again and the result was a little better, but like it was before. So I remembered that there are some software updates that VIA puts out to enable/control enhanced AGP interfaces on newer mobos.. sure enough, installed the VIA 4-in-1 Update an set the screen back to 32bit color resulting in Perfect, and lightning fast, Flash playback PLUS 0% CPU usage in RR when idle (as it was supposed to be).

To sum up, if you want to use full res flash, you better have a decent graphics card along with the appropriate VIA/Card Drivers installed or it will use more CPU and look choppy. I can almost guarantee you that some of the most portable and/or cheapest computers/laptops have a real cheap-O VGA card in them (typically with SHARED RAM memory) which will provide you with just-as cheap non-accelerated graphics (which is what Flash uses). In any case, it never hurts to look at your manufacturer's website (or VIA's website) for an update to your AGP/PCI[EX] Interface drivers and update them. Typically windows installs a "standard" interface which works, but it's the same one that sucks CPU and displays choppy 2D graphics.

guino · 06-26-2005, 12:03 AM

Knwon Issues

1-Flash does NOT make any use of graphic accelatarion of video cards such as OpenGL or Direct3D, so basically you will never be able to achieve fast Flash graphics/animations without a card that is capable of fast 2D acceleration (i.e. most SHARED memory cards).

2-Using MilkDrop and Flash at the same time may cause CPU load issues. There's some kind of bug in the Flash.ocx (By Macromedia) that on CERTAIN machines (or perhaps video cards) the flash movie messes up the CPU work load -- my best guess is that the VIS plugin is using CPU which causes the Flash file to loose synchrony and furthermore stay out of sync making the flash movie try harder to display the stuff on the screen (but it never does "catch up"). I had to disable all kinds of stuff in RR to find out about it and it wasn't until I prevented RR from displaying flash movies that it started to work normally. This does NOT happen if you use a skin that doesn't have flash... I tried all kinds of stuff to prevent the issue from happening without any success.. basically, if this happens to you, you'll have to pick between flash and milkdrop... so, not EVERYBODY has to do that.. it really depends on your machine.. for instance:

-My Laptop is 2.2Ghz and has a GForce2 4200 -- Works Fine
-My Desktop is 2.4Ghz and has an ATI AIW 8500DV -- Messes up with Flash

I also know for a fact that the MilkDrop issue may not surface if you set it to automatically start in full screen if the 'change resolution' option is set up.

I'm sorry but after trying for so long I give up in making it work.. I can only hope that a new flash player version will have this fixed ... Perhaps a different type of Flash animation (frame based) would not have the same issue..

guino · 06-05-2006, 12:22 AM

I experienced a high CPU load when using a skin with Flash. I followed your instructions per the FAQ. I updated Flash by downloading the full_flashplayer_win_ie file. (NOTE: RR cannot be running as the shell. You must be running explorer.exe as the shell. No exceptions!) I still experience high CPU usage. Then I followed the steps using Flash.zip. However, when I went to regsvr32 flash.ocx I got an error that said something about:

Quote:

DllRegisterServer in flash.ocx failed.
Return code was: 0x8002801c

A quick Google search lead me to HERE that basically said there was an access violation in the registry and I needed to figure out which key was giving me problems so I could grant myself permission to the key. Per their instructions, I downloaded RegMon32 from Sysinternals (which by the way makes some great little freeware applications that do not need to be installed to use!; check them out.)

Because I ran into this problem I want to elobrate on the steps that I used to correct this problem. The above link does not go in to very good detail as how to find the problem keys. Here are my suggested steps that I used:

1. Download and run RegMon32
2. Hit CTRL+A to turn off Auto-Scroll
3. Hit CTRL+L to bring up the filter/highlight options
4. Next to Include type: regsvr32
5. Next to highlight type: ACCESS DENIED
6. Click Start > Run and enter CMD and press enter
7. Type CD\Windows\System32
8. Type regsvr32 flash.ocx
9. If unsuccessful, switch over to RegMon and find the first entry that is highlighted and double click on it
10. Regedit will open to the appropriate key.
11. Click Edit > Permissions and select Everyone in the Group or usernames box
12. Check the box that says Allow next to Full Control and hit OK.
13. Close Regedit
14. Switch back to the command prompt and hit the up arrow to repeat the last command and press enter (or just retype regmon32 flash.ocx)
15. Repeat steps 9-14 until you get a successful response. (I personally had to do it three times before it worked for me).
16. Reboot

My CPU times when from 86% when idle to 6% (average) after completing these steps. I feel that it should be added to the FAQ because there is nothing in there saying when the regsvr is unsuccessful -- and here it is ...

.

Derek

guino · 07-02-2006, 01:23 PM

If you're trying to regsvr32 the ocx, alternate from d_sellers1 post, post 1 should be enough to fix your issue, other than that, you can try running:

Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\UninstFl.exe

Then trying doing regsvr32 again.

guino · 04-08-2007, 08:38 PM

It has also been reported that reducing Hardware Acceleration actually may fix issues and improve the speed of Flash on some graphic cards (i.e. ATI). You can try this by following these steps:

-Right click on any empty spot of your Desktop and click "Properties"
-Go into the "Settings Tab" and click "Advanced"
-Go into the "Troubleshoot Tab" and reduce the "Hardware Acceleration" by one notch
-Click Apply/Ok