Should my Avast UI be allowing the interface to bleed through like this?

[EmoHobo]

I don't look at much so if this is just something that happens, I won't worry about it, but sometimes when I bring the window up the old style window bar bleeds through.  Sometimes it's just the buttons on the right other time it's the entire bar.

I run Windows XP SP3 and this seems to be the only program I'm noticing with this issue, I haven't made any changes so I don't know where this could be coming from.

[DavidR]

I run XP Pro and have never seen that since the UI change.

On occasion in XP you see remnants of windows that have closed, but that is more graphical artefacts.

[EmoHobo]

I run XP Pro and have never seen that since the UI change.

On occasion in XP you see remnants of windows that have closed, but that is more graphical artefacts.

Yeah, I can force it to happen on Avast only if I min and max the window over and over, but it also just happens when I open it up.  It's not a huge issue, but maybe I'm thinking my graphics card is going bad.  It's quite old.

Edit: Actually maybe you can help me confirm something, but I am going to be terrible at explaining it.  You know when you minimize or restore a window how you can see that animation of the window sliding into it's tab or out of it, is it supposed to be like a solid blue bar at the top like the old window logo or is it meant to be a curved smooth look like how the windows look in XP.  I only ask because I'm very paranoid about something being wrong with my graphics card and it rendering weird.

[DavidR]

Well you don't give any details of your graphics card type, processor, RAM.

Personally I would disable any animations for opening and closing windows (helps with low resource graphics cards).

[EmoHobo]

Well you don't give any details of your graphics card type, processor, RAM.

Personally I would disable any animations for opening and closing windows (helps with low resource graphics cards).

All I know about my Graphics Card is that it's a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500, Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz is the processor I think, and the RAM is 1.5GB

[DavidR]

I'm talking of the spec of your graphics card not OS.

This NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500, is a very old card so it won't have much GDDR (Graphics RAM) and its processor won't have a lot of grunt, so you shouldn't use any fancy animated options. Right click on your desktop and select Display Properties, Settings tab, Advanced button, Adapter tab and that tells you how much RAM it has.

[EmoHobo]

256 MB, I've been using this setup for nearly five years with no issues, I'm actually shocked the parts have lasted this long and I really don't use many animated graphics really.

I don't play games on it so I've never found it a huge priority to upgrade it.

[DavidR]

The fact that it has been fine for years, isn't necessarily relevant, what is open and using graphics resources. The avast UI is probably a little more graphics intensive than older versions.

I think that the Adjust for best performance or Custom settings and uncheck any animated or graphics intensive setting. The Adjust for best performance is an easy one to test, you can always go back to what you used before if it doesn't resolve/improve the situation.

[EmoHobo]

The fact that it has been fine for years, isn't necessarily relevant, what is open and using graphics resources. The avast UI is probably a little more graphics intensive than older versions.

I think that the Adjust for best performance or Custom settings and uncheck any animated or graphics intensive setting. The Adjust for best performance is an easy one to test, you can always go back to what you used before if it doesn't resolve/improve the situation.

A restart actually cleared the issue up, should of tried that first, but maybe I shouldn't have to radically change my system for the interface of my Antivirus, anyway to maybe lower the settings of Avast?

[DavidR]

A restart is likely to work as it would be freeing up resources, but it may well come back. It isn't just the AV interface, but the cumulative graphics resource of all programs, displayed and in use, etc.

[EmoHobo]

A restart is likely to work as it would be freeing up resources, but it may well come back. It isn't just the AV interface, but the cumulative graphics resource of all programs, displayed and in use, etc.

The problem only shows up in avast, not in any other program I use, if the problem spreads to other programs then I'll begin to look for a fix.

[DavidR]

It is called the straw the breaks the camels back, at some point when you load something you reach the tipping point.

[EmoHobo]

It is called the straw the breaks the camels back, at some point when you load something you reach the tipping point.

I wonder what is causing it, I really just run mIRC and Pidgin, neither of them are too graphically demanding, are they?

[DavidR]

I can't help you with what is causing it as there is more than that running, the desktop also uses some. Graphical artefacts are notoriously difficult to diagnose as who is to say when it would reach breaking point and how it might display itself.

I don't use  mIRc or Pidgin, so I have no idea what their graphics resource might be, I'm not even sure there is an application that might be able to show what graphics resources are in use and by what program. That tool if it exists would also be using graphic resources.

If it is so infrequent, personally I wouldn't be too concerned about investigation, if it were to be more common then (because of the difficulty in finding what is using graphic resources), I would be reducing the Visual Effects.

[EmoHobo]

According to the presets what is best for my machine is all of them on, I doubt this is very accurate though.