Java 1.6 repaint speed inconsistent — and NetMeeting fixes it?

Question

Has anybody seen a case where Java's graphics performance is terrible until you launch NetMeeting? Simply launching and quitting NetMeeting is enough to fix it.

We're upgrading our JRE (to 1.6.0_12) in our enterprise and noticed an odd inconsistency. A small percentage of users have noticed that their repaint speed slows way down, to where it takes several seconds to repaint a moved window.

However, all you need to do is launch NetMeeting and quit it. That fixes it, at least until you launch a new Java app, where re-launching NetMeeting again fixes it.

We haven't tried something like 1.6.0_14 yet, as it breaks support certification on some other apps and is therefore not a generally acceptable solution. Also, we have not been able to discern any pattern amongst the machines that are affected. It's definitely machine-based and not user-based, as all users trying a "bad" machine see the problem...

Answer 1

I know for certain that NetMeeting hooks into the display driver, so my guess is that the act of running NetMeeting is switching the driver into a mode that resolves the Java graphics performance issue. Do the bad machines by any chance have a different display adapter to the others?

Anyway, even if not, based on ths theory, you might be able to get some results from combinations of settings in the Display Control Panel. I'd look to taking a bad machine aside as a test, repro the problem with default settings, then switch all effects off (as well as disabling "show window contents while dragging" and setting hardware acceleration down to "none") then gradually ramp up from there until you hit jackpot.