I receive Aero Lag when opening and closing windows in Windows 7

WOW!  OK, I have read most of the posts and honestly i am very confused. Being a music and home theater buff i have volunteered to help out a friend who plays in a band... and so "no lag" on playback is really important. The problem i am having is actually with Vista Home Premium on a laptop. Seems almost like everything i am reading about 7 like dejavu. I get a slight hestitation or pause during playback and it is not always at the same place in the song. With Both Media Player and realplayer. Same thing with mouse (movement) jitter (sometimes). Its just wierd. I have also tried making any cache adjustments that either product might accept. None of this is streaming off the net - its all right from the hard drive and there plenty of space.

So at first i thought he was just like everyone else and poluting his hard drive with junk from the free dowlnload sites. Then i found that he actually pays for them and downloads them from a reputable site.

1. Checked for virsues, - clean!
2. Not much running in startup and seemed to be standard services but possible i have something in the background still that i'm missing.
3. Only have 2GB Mem so i try to use analyzer and see whats going on - seems a little low on mem so i upgrade him to 4GB.

 Still getting the lag but longer i leave the PC sit and sort of settle down it seems like it doesnt have as much of the hesitation. Same thing as in the thread - its slight but just enough to make it sound like a bad recording and unacceptable to someone trying to play along with the music. ALso wierd, if i play the same song back to back its like it cahces and cleans it up so i dont have the problem until i start a new song or reboot.

Getting the same result with RealPlayer as with WMP 11 and 12.

4. Updated the bios on the PC - nada
5. Updates to realplayer - nothin changed
6. Copy a few of the files to a USB thumbdrive and try playback that way - what the heck - same results.
7. Had enough... Clean reload. Nothing but Windows Vista 32 bit home premium and SP2 - well, not exactly. I also have Windows Security Essentials but i really doubt it has anything to do with it. Seriously, no other programs, fresh instal and no change.

Everyone is pointing to windows 7 but i cant seem to get past vista with theses same issues. Granted, some of the songs are higher bit rates and can range 3mb - 7mb per file but i dont see the issue? I can copy them to a P4-HT Desktop with XP Pro and 1GB RAM and i have no problems. Just like everyones saying they can go back to vista. And apparently the more i look the more i find the same thing going on with pauses, skips or delays (all so subtle and slight but enough to drive you crazy).

I tried also changing a few settings to change diplay settings to "Best Performance" and then exluding indexing to the music folder - has anyone played with indexing?  And then i go back to Aero? Just not sure - and Aero is new to me.

No offense - i can imagine everyones frustration with lag in 7 (and video too) but i am getting plumb wore out on this one. Am i missing something? Does anyone have any suggestions (other than downgrading to XP)? After reading all the posts i dont think going to 7 will help either. Would really appreaciatte any help.

Config is Toshiba Sat

   AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core 1.90Ghz, W/ Vista Home Premium 32 bit

   ATI Radeon Graphics X1200 (oddly enough i am only getting a 1.0 for my graphics score - that really stinks).

  High Def Audio Device (microsoft drivers) w/ Dolby Sound Room ( I have also disabled "ALL ENHANCEMENTS"  in speaker properties)

The problem discussed in this thread is NOT a video playback problem. It is about an annoying stutter in the Aero animation when opening ore closing a window. Whereas this animation is butter smooth in Vista, it looks like one or two frames of the animation are missing on Windows 7. The problem exists on EVERY installation on Windows 7 but some people are not aware of it because they never used Vista or because they are just not as affected by such a subtle problem. For me such a stutter always makes me think there's something wrong with disk interrupts or something similar when in fact everything is OK. But the pure illusion of something not working properly is enough to draw my attention away from work. It's just very disturbing and lowers productivity.

The partial fix for the closing animation by opening and closing the magnifier is just proof that this is in fact a bug in Windows 7 and not intended behaviour. Or, if the partial fix is destroying desired behaviour and the slight stutter is by design, then I urge Microsoft to make this configurable.

I'm fed up with having to adjust to Windows when it should be adjusting to me. Another reason why I completely switched back to Vista was the new Media Center interface. Just why am I forced to adjust again to a new user interface and menu structure? Looking for the actors in a movie suddenly got  complicated, adjusting the zoom got more complex. It's fine when Microsoft introduces such changes but they should always give the users the option to switch back to the previous presentation.

As a result I'm now in for at least two more years on Vista on my main workstation and XP to the bitter end on all other machines in my house because I refuse to buy Windows 7 licenses until at least some of its numerous issues are fixed.

Hello,

Does sp1 RC solve this issue?

I'm downloading the sp1 RC and I'm going to test it.

Francois42

edit : sp1 RC doesn't fix the issue...

Please Microsoft, solve this issue! it's clearly a bug. When I open/close magnify, the lag disapear!

PS : I'm french so escuse if my english isn'tvery well..

Dennis, I confirm the validity of your solution. Just disconnected my USB extension hub hooked to one of the USB ports and the windows are much more snappy, although not quite like in Vista. Thanks!!!