This is weird...

Okay, this is the strangest thing I have ever seen...

When I move the scroll wheel on my mouse, my cold cathodes flicker. What makes it even more unusual is that they only do it when a window is scrolling. If I don't have any windows open, I can move the scroll wheel all I want...without any flickering; but as soon as I have a window open (IE, for example), the flickering starts every time I scroll. I just got a new mouse and keyboard set, but had the same problem with my old mouse. I also noticed a strange squealing sound coming from the general direction of my PS/2 ports when I scrolled...so I thought it might be my ports causing the problems. Since my BIOS supports USB legacy keyboards (good thing, too, because I access the BIOS a lot), I simply unplugged both PS/2 connectors and am using the USB connector. This solved the squealing problem, but the lights are still flickering. I thought it might be because both my old and new mice are wireless...but a corded mouse makes the lights flicker as well. Since the lights are connected directly to the power supply, I can't imagine what is causing this!

Update: The squealing sound has started again...it seems to be coming from the cold cathode transformer. Why in the world would the lights flicker and make noises only when a page is scrolling??

[Jason425]

my only idea is that maybe your psu is funky.. dunno what else..

I wonder if running a capacitor between the power supply and the CCFL transformer would stop that? It seems as if the transformer doesn't have any kind of buffer at all that might prevent things like this. If I get really bored one day, I might try it.

I don't know if we're on the same track here, but I've just built a new system that includes a GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, and am having the exact same problem. Specifically scrolling long webpages in IE and some games. This problem has been reported on another hardware forum and appears to be a know issue with these graphics cards.

Hope this helps.

Actually, that does help. I noticed that my old P4 computer's neon lights would flicker sometimes, but never thought about the graphics card at all. I thought about it after reading your post and remembered that they always worked fine before I installed a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. My new computer has never had anything but the 5950, so I have no way to know if that's the problem...but it seems to be. It's obviously nothing to do with the mouse, because I can turn the wheel without any flickering...as long as a page is not scrolling when I do so. As soon as a page scrolls, the flickering begins. Oh well. It doesn't bother me that bad...it's just annoying sometimes.

It's a bad ground. I had this problem awhile back. It fixed itself when I changed cases, do you have a line conditioner? You may want to check and see if everything looks like it's ok....Do you have a good psu? An Antec is best, especially for a system like yours.

[Jason425]

enermax are good too.. or so i hear

I do have a line conditioner, and I have an Aspire PSU from Performance-PCs.com. It's funny you mention a bad ground, though, since my house does not have a ground. I have three-wire outlets (that I recently installed so I wouldn't have to buy a bunch of two-to-three prong adapters. lol), but the third prong is not functional. I'm sure I will do something about that someday, since my surge protectors and UPS system all have "ground fault" lights that stay on constantly...but nothing has blown up yet, so I'm not terribly worried right now. I have been living here for almost eight months now without any problems at all. My house was built in 1955 (before three-prong outlets) but, since the builders used high-quality copper wire, I haven't bothered updating the wiring. If the builders had used aluminum wiring, which was much more common (and dangerous) in those days, I would have updated it before I even moved in.

Yup, there's your problem. You know that APC cannot warrent your stuff plugged in unless it's grounded, didn't you? You may want to ground, I never plug anything in if the light comes on. The noise you here is from unclean, ungrounded electricity, that's not what you want on that system, because something's going to fry if an electrical storm happens to come by...