Right Click on video clip / media file in explorer makes screen blink / flash

Using Forceware 62.20 with Win XP SP 2

Whenever you right click on any video clip .avi .mpg etc. in windows
explorer or on the desktop, the screen blinks or flashes to black for
a second like it is doing a resolution change. This does NOT happen
with any other type of file, even those associated with WMP (mp3).
Nothing crashes or anything, but it is a bit distracting. I have no
unusual software like quickview or anything that does anything on
right click.

Anybody noticed this? And, if this is a common observation, how do we
report this sort of thing to Nvidia? I presume they do not read this
group?

Thanks.

 

Disable the Nview feature if you don't need it. NView in the recent
drivers has been upgraded to have a "Play this file on your TV"
function. I'm not sure if it's on by default or not. Probably is if
you've got a line hooked up.

As a last resort, go ahead and disable the NVidia services from
starting. You can use MSCONFIG, or a right click on My Computer and
choose Manage (select Services), which is much better. There might be 2
of them. You can ignore the CPL extension one (NVCPL) I think, as it
pretty much just loads the icon.

 

"Dave" posted his issue below back in 08/2004. Here we are in 10/2005, and
with NVIDIA's latest 81.85 drivers, this particular problem *still* exists.
No more monitors should have to suffer the physical abuse!

The problem is definitely related to the 'Play On My...' functionality of
the NVIDIA driver suite. 'Play On My...' is an additional context menu
option shown when you right-click on certain media files. On my system, a
clean install of the NVIDIA 81.85 drivers assigned this shell extension to
three file types: AVI, MPG, and WMV. It is annoying beyond belief to have
one's screen *dramatically* blink every single time one right-clicks on a
popular media file. (I'm currently editing videos and authoring
DVDs...argh!) What's even worse is that the functionality is really useless
on systems that have just a single display. When I expand the 'Play On
My...' context menu option, the only choice is '...Analog Display'.

The ClassID (or GUID) for this shell extension is
FFB699E0-306A-11d3-8BD1-00104B6F7516. While there are many ways to handle
this, I personally chose to disable this NVIDIA shell extension *only* for
the above file types. If you *completely* disable this shell extension, you
won't have access to the NVIDIA advanced display settings.

Locate the following Registry keys:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AVIFile
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MPEGFile
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WMVFile

Drill into \shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\PlayOnMyTV\ for each of these keys
and modify the '(Default)' string value. I personally changed the value to
{FFB699E0-306A-11d3-8BD1-00104B6F7516-Disable}. I prefer disabling over
deletion when I can do it "cleanly" and the OS remains stable. You must
reboot for the changes to take effect.

This simply removes NVIDIA's custom 'Play On My...' context menu option from
these file types. As a result, when you right-click on these file types,
nvcpl.dll is not called...so no more blink.

You'll still experience the "resolution blink" during boot (Windows XP
splash screen) and when you navigate to the advanced settings of the Display
control panel, but this is bearable for me relative to the unacceptable
"right-click resolution blink".

I agree that this is treating the symptom of the problem and not the problem
itself. I would bet that the fundamental problem has something do with poor
initialization logic in nvcpl.dll, but only NVIDIA can fix this problem.