Flickering in Notepad++
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Hi All,
I am developing a winforms application. When running that application from VS with the Notepad++ opened in the background, notepad++ starts flickering. But this does not happens with Notepad. I have commented every customization in my application yet it flickers.
Do you have any idea to solve this?
I am using Notepad++ v5.9.8 version.
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Without knowing exactly what you’re doing. It’s possible several things could be an issue, speed of system, memory, etc. It’s also possible you don’t have enough DoEvents in your application or VS is just taking up to much processing time with your machine specifications. None of these are ‘easy’ to resolve.
That said, I’ve seen this before many years ago, with specific applications being affected, so I checked to see if I could find something on that. Most of these refer to VS itself flickering which isn’t what you’re saying; but, it could be related. Here’s a couple of items I’d check:
Google search keywords “application flicker using visual studio”
As I’m seeing and recalling, there appear to be a number of issues that can cause screen flicker. One thing, which might/might not be related is whether you’re running the project in the background, or some aspect of the project is running is the DoEvents() which returns control to the OS handler periodically to allow for housekeeping. “How to: Reduce Graphics Flicker with Double Buffering for Forms and Controls” the second article in a Google search with the keywords “WinForms development flickering” as it may lead you to some things to try.
This issue can be fairly complex to resolve and has a lot of dependencies, programming language, background applications running along side of VS, memory or other hardware related issues. The bottom line was that I put up with this for quite some time before making a hardware update that fixed the issue for me, even though that created other issues. Jokingly, it seems to be a power user issue! :-)
To summarize: I’ve seen this in various forms, and have done everything from hardware updates, modifications in code, and VS issues. But, one thing I’m fairly confident about is that it’s more likely related to Visual Studio or your system, and not due to an application running external to Visual Studios, like Notepad++, although every operation running in the background could be exacerbating the problem. I hope this helps, Good luck.
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Regarding my last post, I’m presuming you’ve tried updating your Notepad++ version. Depending on the age of any app running in the background, it may be using old libraries, which could, though not interfere, be increasing the number of memory swaps needed to keep it running, increasing processing time, etc. One of the things I’ve done is to use MSConfig, to reduce background applications running in the system to free up memory, and temporarily reduce overhead. IOW only run what you need. Using that can by process of elimination determine what if anything might be causing the issue.
