Mystery timing issue

[Evelina Tapia]

Hello,

I have a simple visual priming task I want to run -- design is very
simple (one block, one procedure repeated for 100 trials). No inline
script or anything "fancy". When I run the script on one of the
machines in my lab, the last few trials on the machine start slowing
down -- there are stimulus timing/duration errors in the last few
trials; when I run the same script again, the number of trials with
timing issues increase and during a third run all trials have timing
problems. I've tried this under "normal" conditions (Internet,
background programs) and when the PC was unplugged from the Internet,
screensaver was disabled, the PC was running under Diagnostic mode (so
all background programs were turned off) without any significant
changes in the outcome. Now, if I run the exact same script on
another, very similar machine, there are no timing issues AT ALL and
that's with Internet connected and background programs running their
usual course.

For various reasons I need to run my program on the "faulty" machine
so I would appreciate any ideas of what might be causing these timing
issues on one PC but not another.

The "faulty" PC is running
Windows XP Professional, version 202, Service Pack 3
AMD Athlon
Core Processor 3800+
2.00 Ghz, 2.00 GB of RAM
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce8400GS, memory 512. MB, version
6.14.0011.8250, date March 2009

The "good" PC is running
Windows XP Media center edition, version 2002, Service Pack 3
Pentium 4 CPU
3.06 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce7300LE, version 8.2.6.8, date June 2006

Could it be that the better/newer graphics card on the "faulty"
machine is not functioning properly and if so, how would I test it to
verify?

Could the monitor for whatever reason be a problem?

Also, I've noticed that the duration errors appear when I repeating
the SAME script -- if I run another script (which basically does the
exact same thing but is created in another E-studio set), it seems to
function fine.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!

Evelina

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