Windows 7 + Mbox2 Octa Capture UA-1010 + i5 HP DM4 Bug Issued Resolved Display Settings

MONITOR DISPLAY SIZE CAUSES AUDIO BURPS IN SONAR X1 AND 8.5.3

I reported a problem a week ago with Mbox2 stalling Sonar...well i upgraded to a UA-1010 and had a similar issue, while not as frequent.

To make a LONGGGGGG story short, there is an issue with the graphics setting on the HP DM4 that conflicted with the screen drawings of the moving cursor/waveform in the software. The computer is one of the newer 14" laptops.

There were two hints that gave it away to me (problem occured with both mbox2 and UA1010 Octa Capture:

1) In Sonar X1, the blips seemed to happen consistently at short regular intervals. In 8.5.3 there was frame freezing of realtime waveform only when devices were plugged in.

2) When fiddling with graphics settings for my monitor, i noticed that changing the color scheme to 16 bit made the windows7 icons jagged looking like an old school atari game....

....so i changed the screen display size to 1360 wide (versus the default 1366 size) while leaving in 16 bit color settings. Immediately the windows 7 taskbar icons returned to smooth normal looking icons despite the "you are not using optimal display size settings" message from the computer"...i guess the monitor is some strange non-standard size that subsequently affected the realtime graphics drawing in Sonar and Protools and the rendering to 16bit colors....because once i relaunched Sonar under the changed setting, it worked flawlessly....both versions!

Maybe Cakewalk can include this in their troubleshoot. I verify the problem by switching the setting back to "optimized" default size and the problem reappeared...of note the problems both existed when i disabled the laptop's monitor and only listened to playback.

More specifically:

In Sonar 8.5.3 the realtime scrolling would freeze a half second into record or playback   
In Sonar X1 the realtime scrolling was fine, but the audio playback  had pulsing clicks that were synchronized with the FWD/REV window tracking bar in the transport...

BOTH PROBLEMS SOLVED! THE GRAPHICS CARD IS FINE....IT IS THE SCREEN SIZE SETTING THAT CREATED THE PROBLEM.

...of note, the problem exists (existed) with both the mbox2 and the new UA1010, which by the way sounds fantastic and took about 10 mins total to set up and get working perfectly. It is solid on all counts.

 The Mbox2 is a piece of **** and has another issue with lingering zipper noise and driver conflicts but I have that isolated to USB issues, most likely those similar to what new powerbook users are encountering....low USB amperage and/or hub conflicts.