Ever since I re-installed XP, my 2D refresh rates have slowed down. Hard to explain, but whenever I perform an action that updates the entire screen, such as minimizing a program or clicking on a weblink, I can see the screen kind of "redraw" itself really quickly from top to bottom. It's especially noticeable in Photoshop. For example, if I drag a color value slider up and down, I can see the photo being redrawn many times per second, from top to bottom. This never happened before. My chipset and video drivers are installed, and my 3DMark06 score is the same as before, so 3D performance hasn't been affected.

Did you install the latest DirectX version? What is your monitor set to in Display - Settings ? It should be at least Plug and Play Monitor, or better still, the proper drivers for your monitor, especially if it is a more recent crt one - you may get better maximum settings than P&P monitor can give you. If that is not right, change the driver in Display - Settings - Advanced - Monitor. After you have checked out the monitor and have changed it to a better driver if necessary and saved settings and re-started Display properties, look in Display - Settings - Advanced - Adapter. Is the vertical refresh rate set as high as it will go? There may be other settings in Advanced you can tweak.

Yes, DX 9.0c is installed. The monitor is a Dell LCD and is identified properly (drivers are installed). Settings are 1920x1200, 75Hz (max it will go), 32 bit color.

Do you have onboard video or a video card? How much memory does the video have? If you have onboard video, increase the ram the video uses to it's maximum in the bios if it isn't already set that way. Is this the same monitor you were using previously? If you were using a faily recent CRT monitor before, no LCD monitor will perform as well as a fairly recent CRT one. In any case you will probably be able to select higher vertical refresh rates if you reduce the screen resolution. The lower your resolution the better the video performance. Personally 1920 x 1200 would be way too high for me - the smaller text would be too small.

I'm using a PCIe 16x All-in-wonder X1900 with 256mb of video memory. This is the same monitor that I was using previously. (I just mentioned the refresh rate because you asked for all of the settings. I'm not bothered at all by 75Hz. "The lower your resolution the better the video performance." I lowered the screen to 1280x768 and my 2D update speed DRAMATICALLY increased. I just don't get it. Before I reinstalled XP, I could run at 1920x1200 without any speed loss. "Personally 1920 x 1200 would be way too high for me - the smaller text would be too small." Image quality isn't as good when I use any resolution other than 1920x1200.

"Image quality isn't as good when I use any resolution other than 1920x1200." That kind of thing is common with a LCD monitor for other than the "native" resolution, but it can be less dramatic with the better brands - e.g. I have noted Samsung monitors still look very good in other resolutions. What I noticed most is the text fonts look poor at some resolutions. You can make that look a lot better on an LCD screen by using this tool - Turn on Clear Type in Windows XP - makes type on LCD screens look clearer http://www.microsoft.com/typography...

Thanks. I'm still having this speed issue that I never had before, though. While text may be a tad small at 1920x1200, nothing can beat all of the screen real estate that it provides.