Interacting with ANYthing on 2nd monitor=frequent disconnects

[nibs]

Sorry for such a long post, and I'm not sure if this is a hardware or software problem; I just built this machine recently, with W7 Pro, and have the standard stuff like antivirus, firewall, firefox, etc.

I've just gotten the hardware up to snuff (or so I thought) to multibox 5 on one machine across 2 monitors, where I had been dual boxing with 2 computers.

When the 2 accounts on the 2nd monitor attempt to interact with the world, (other than just shooting it or healing it) each of them will disconnect 3 times out of 4. Whether the IWT box is checked or not, when monitor 2 toons left click on something, the camera angle changes directions (apparently at random). Upon a right click, that game disconnects, and sends me to the logon screen.

I CAN interact with my other toons, just not reliably with the rest of the world.

I have tried with and without the IWT mouse option, and uninstalled jamba and armory, and swiped, er, borrowed, the monitor from my mother's computer to test if it was because the first monitor I tried was VGA with a DVI converter, rather than straight DVI. No go.

Here's my rig/setup:
Antec 902 tower
Ultra 750w PSU
can't recall the MB at the moment; max of 16gb RAM
AMD Phenom II X4 945
6GB RAM (1 4GB and 2 1GB sticks, will become 16GB over the next few months)
ATI Raedon HD 5850
using the onboard sound
Killer NIC card
Maxtor 80GB IDE hard drive (hope to replace w/80GB ssd one day)
Western Digital 1TB external HD (where most of my junk is stored)
Lite-On DVD/CD R/W Sata Drive
Logitech G11 keyboard
Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman

Addons:
NPCScan (plus extras
Ackis Recipe List
Advanced Trade Skill Window
Altoholic
Auctioneer Suite
Auctionator
Bad Boy, plus level filter
BankItems
BunnyHunter
Chat Alert (doesn't seem to function after 4.0.1)
Cooldowns
DataStore stuff (for Altoholic)
DCoords
Decursive
Dominos
EveryQuest2
Fishermans Friend
Fizzwidget Levelator
Friend & Ignore Share
FuBar 3.6, with BankItems, Durability, Friends, Guild, Garbage, Location (broken) and Trainer (also broken)
Gatherer
GearScore
GoingPrice (Allakhazam and Wowhead)
HandyNotes
IgnoreMore
LibAce2 and 3 and Rock 1.0
Minimap button bag
Ogri'lazy
Postal
RecipeBook 3.3.2 BETA 1
Silver Dragon and data
Stackpack
Swatter
Swindler Preventer
Nirriti's ActionButtonColors (broken)
WhoNeedsThis v0.34
Zygor Guides and Talent Advisor

The 5850 has a Westinghouse 26" monitor plugged into the HDMI slot, and a Samsung SyncMaster 225bw in portrait mode on one of the DVI slots.

Running Pwnboxer, game one occupies about 2/3rds of the 26", with games 2 and 3 on the right side. Games 4 and 5 are stacked on the Samsung.

Games 1 and 2 are on their own cores, with games 3-5 sharing cores 3 and 4 (should that be changed to have 4 and 5 share core 4?)

Graphics are set to low on all machines, and fps are limited by Pwnboxer, as Blizzard's does not yet show a number value when you mouse over the slide bar.

I have Pwnboxer only broadcasting 1-= and the space bar to jump for right now, until I get the macros settled after all the patches.

I have turned off the PwnBoxer panel, because I can't find a good place to put it.

I have not configured fast game switch, as my goal is to have each game big enough to see and interact with.

Autofocus on game hover and enable running game windows movement are both checked.

Just tried Blizz's monitor 2 option, and it popped game 4 back onto the middle of monitor 1 at 800x600 windowed mode. Logged in, interacted with 3 world items without a disconnect, or nearly as much lag. Dragged the frame for game 4 back onto monitor 2, right clicked on an innkeeper, and got disconnected.

Tried disabling all Addons on game 5. Interacted with 1 item (candy bucket), which turned toon around, tried to interact with the innkeeper, and got disconnected.

What do I need to do to get the games to work right on monitor 2?

Thanks for your time

Edit: Opened 1 game this morning and did stuff on monitor 1, did just fine, then dragged it over to monitor 2. I get the disconnections again, and the camera angle change thing. Running ATI's Catalyst Control Center v.2010.0825.2146.37182 to rotate monitor to portrait.

[Ualaa]

You should be able to run five instances of warcraft quite easily with that system. If you're doing a lot of things in the background (streaming or making movies), I'd consider more ram, but for predominantly playing warcraft with possibly a few non-resource intensive processes running 6GB is plenty for five-boxing.

Two monitors is more pixels to render then one monitor, which would reduce your performance somewhat... but you shouldn't be freezing consistently.




You could try running some other applications on two screens, which will tell you if it is a hardware issue or not. If you crash/freeze, it is likely your hardware, but if not then its either a Pwnboxer or Warcraft issue.

If that's the case run warcraft without any addons, to verify it is not an addon conflict of some sort. If you have issues with warcraft on default settings without addons, it is likely a setting in Pwnboxer. I don't use PB, so unfortunately cannot troubleshoot it.

[nibs]

I should have been more specific in what I did this morning; I opened Wow without PBxer, using the launcher (I try to use the wow launcher at least once in a while to get all updates applied).

Got the same results. I'm going to copy over the files into another directory and do the whole rename interface, etc, and see what happens.

[nibs]

Just ran a game of WoW, with no addons installed, from the WoW launcher. Did fine on monitor 1, so I dragged it to monitor 2, tried to interact with the innkeeper again, and got disconnected. Then I dragged it back to monitor 1, logged back in, and can talk to the innkeeper all day. So now it's either WoW or my hardware... and firefox and explorer windows seem perfectly happy on monitor 2, so I'm leaning towards WoW. Grrr

[Ualaa]

Could try posting on the wow support forum.
Not sure you'll get a useful response, but if you bump it every few hours, someone usually answers.

[nibs]

Yeah, I've been wading through WoW's forums to see if anyone else has this problem, but haven't seen it yet. Sigh.

On my other computer, WoW crashes hard sometimes when I mouse over stuff. Blizz has a blue post on it, so I'm not the only one that happens to, as I've never sent in a ticket on it. Just took it as part of the landscape of playing on W7 on an older machine.

Wonder how long it will take to get a response on the forums there, as I put in a ticket 19 hours ago on my game freezing when I enter the HH event...

Thanks for trying...

[Ualaa]

Could try asking on the other boxing site.
www -dot- dual-boxing -dot- com

Quite a few knowledgeable people there too.
And a much larger community, so a greater chance someone has dealt with something similar.

[nibs]

I think I've found a work-around. If I make monitor 1 portrait, the game runs. If I try it with #2, disconnections ensue. But the game runs if #2 is in landscape. So now my primary monitor is tall and skinny (sure makes Firefox look funny).

I'll do some more testing after the cat's vet appt. in the morning; I do need to get some sleep.

Sigh. Only took 2 days around work. Looking forward to not having to squint so hard to move stuff around bags.

I'll post again after I've managed to actually play, rather than just pop in and hope the RNG decide to like me and get me those last three masks...

Still don't know how to actually fix the issue, but I wanted to make a progress report.

Thanks (again) for the encouragement and suggestions.

[nibs]

The workaround has been stable all evening.

Still irritated that WoW won't work portrait style on the 2nd monitor, as this makes this monitor really uncomfortable to look at for long periods; the MIDDLE of the screen is above my eye level by an inch or so.

But I don't have to squint so hard to figure out who has what.

I'm going to call it good enough at least until the RAF runs out!

I am curious if anyone else has enough time/energy/desire to see if they can duplicate my problem... but it is decidedly low on my priorities.

Good Night!