strange mtext and osnap behavior on laptop

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

Hope you can suggest something.  I've had Architecture 2010 installed on a new laptop for a few months, working only in 2D.  Everything works great except the following:

1. Mtext input display lags by one character, i.e. if I type "Office"  I see "offic" in the mtext dialog box.  The "e" appears on the next keystroke, so when I hit space i see the e.  This is maddening. 
2. Osnaps require that i hover over them for a bit to select them, and sometimes are very difficult to pick.  It's almost like there is resistance to the pointer going directly over the snap.  Also maddening.  

The laptop is an Acer 5742G-6600.  It has a Corei5-480M processor, 4GB DDR3 memory, and a NVidia GeForce 540M dedicated card.  Should be more than enough as we have the same software running on much older hardware in the office without issue.  Any ideas?  Thanks so much in advance.

[Anonymous]

Bump.  No one has experiencied anything like this?

 I have to think it's in some way hardware/graphics card related.  Possibly related to nVidia's sharing of the dedicated and integrated cards.  I have the nVidia set to use the dedicated card for ACAD but I'm not confident it's actually using it.  Is anyone using an nVidia 540M card  with Acad without these issues?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Bump.  Anyone have text lagging by one character when typing in Autocad?  Any idea what could cause that?

Thanks.

[pendean · Accepted solution]

Win7 64bit on the new PCs but not the old ones? Turn off Aero Theme in Windows and restart your PC with the Windows Basic Theme, so it acts like your old PCs, see if that helps.

If no help, change the Hardware Acceleration in AutoCAD (if it will let you of course, depends on your system compatiblity).

Otherwise, no, there is no lag as you describe it at all.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Thank you Dean!!!!  That totally worked!  I did not try the windows theme fix, but I turned off hardware acceleration and the problem went away.  

For others (in Architecture 2010):  Tools/Format>Options>System>3D Performance (Performance Settings>Manual Tune>Uncheck "Use hardware acceleration".

I tried to isolate if it was related to a specific setting within hardware acceleration, but it seems to be just related to whether it is on or off.