Fix for Oracle JInitiator Won't Refresh / Repaint on Windows 7 i3 or i5 Machine

Author:
phil
Created:
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
Last Updated:
Tuesday, July 05th, 2011

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The JInitiator Refresh Issue...

Working for a school district which, like most school districts, doesn't have the funding to update their Oracle based financial systems that heavily rely on the old school JInitiator app. While the versions of JInitiator like 1.3.1.22 work fine in 32bit versions of Windows 7, there seems to be a problem on systems running the Intel Core i3 and Core i5 processors where the JInitiator will load, but it won't refresh or repaint its windows. In our case, upon the initial load of the app, all we would get is a new IE window with a white page. If we resized the window or double clicked the title bar, it would repaint the screen, refreshing the content in the window. However, we would have to do that step every time we wanted something to happen in the window. Talk about a pain! We researched all sorts of stuff on it and found all sorts of weird fixes like "JIniator doesn't like multiple threads". Weird thing was, we had a Core i7 Quad Core machine running JInitiator on a 32bit Windows 7 without a problem. That had us scratching our heads... "What was different between the i3/i5 and i7 processors?" Well, the difference we found out, was the video. The i3 & i5 both had the new Intel HD Graphics controller whereas the Core i7 had a Nvidia GPU. I tried updating the Intel drivers to the latest and still no luck... Running across the specs of the computer, we noticed that the computers were advertised as having the "Intel HD Graphics with Dynamic Frequency Technology". That made me do some research to figure out what was so special about the Intel HD Graphics and what the heck "Dynamic Frequency" was. This ran me across the following whitepaper for the new Intel HD Graphics.

A Little Background

To save you some time from reading the whitepaper, I'll give you some background on the new iCore processors... Basically, Intel has moved the entire northbridge chip onto the processor. The northbridge in older computers was responsible for talking to the CPU, Memory, Video & Southbridge. Move that onto the processor and you get a blazing fast performance boost. In doing this, Intel has also followed AMD's footsteps by integrating their own GPU directly onto the die of select iCore CPUs (mainly i3 & i5), again providing much faster video performance and reducing overhead. "So what is this Dynamic Frequency?" To compliment their proprietary Turbo Boost technology which raises & lowers CPU frequency depending on CPU load, thus saving power, they have also included Dynamic Frequency which does basically the same thing for the GPU. It raises and lowers the speed of the GPU on the fly, to help conserve energy (longer lasting batteries, put smiles on tree huggers, etc.)

"Enough already! How do I fix it??"

The fix is simple, believe it or not... You basically have to go into the power savings for Windows 7, edit the power plan and set the Intel Graphics to "Maximum Performance" which turns off the Dynamic Frequency.

"How the heck do you do that??"

If you have a computer that has it's own power saving software, I have no idea... You might have to do some playing... BUT, if you are using the stock Windows 7 power settings, you can do the following:

  1. Click Start
  2. In the search box, type Power Options and hit enter
  3. Chances are, the radio dot is on the Balanced (recommended) setting. Click on the Change plan settings link to the right for whatever plan is selected.
  4. Click the Change advanced power settings link
  5. In the advanced options, scroll down until you find Intel Graphics and click on the + next to it.
  6. You should see two options below the Intel Graphics: Plugged In and On Battery. Set both of these to Maximum Performance.
  7. Apply and OK, then you can close everything else down.
  8. Go test it!!

One of our poor techs about pulled his hair out for two days trying to figure out what the issue was... I hope this saves your hair! (Minus the grays... you can pull those out)

If this got you fixed up, I would love to hear about it! Leave me a quick comment below :) (It's nice to know that I'm not posting stuff in vain)

Alternate Fix

Update 2011/06/20: If the above isn't quite working out in your favor, you might try what was posted in the comments below regarding the manual input of some code to disable the drawing of jinitiator. (It basically shuts off the use of Direct Draw which was changed around quite a bit in Windows 7)

Take a look at RomanH's comment and see if it helps. There are several folks who have commented and said that this DOES work for them and one person mentioned restarting the computer after applying the fix before it worked. Unfortunately I have no easy way of creating a step-by-step process on how to apply the fix so hopefully what's posted below is enough to get you started on figuring it out.

Also...! Thanks to everyone who has posted comments on their fixes! I hate forums with a passion because everyone has the same problem but no one ever has a solid fix. I do my best to create a full proof fix for the problems I've run into on my blog and while the fix may have worked for me at the time, I'm not perfect either so I find it awesome when other's post the things that work for them and contribute to helping someone else. It makes searching for the problem in the future so much easier for everyone!

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Comments

Hi, solution given by you works, its totally work. I was tortured by this problem from last 2 days, but while googling i found this exact problem and solution provided by you guys.

Thanks a ton from India!!!

Thanks dude, just aced this on a e5420... right on the nail!

Thanx dude, just tried it on a new 5420 lat. Works like a charm!

it did really woooooooooork

Million Thanksssssssssssss

Tried this and it worked for me. Dell Latitude e6320 with Intel HD Graphics

You are right, MICROS OPERA is worst. Every time you have to change some dll or what or ever. By your selfs we have to figured out all tricky thing.

It works perfect an you are totally rigt with your opinin about micros opera.

Thank you! This save my day :-)

Huge, huge thank you.

Worked on multiple Windows 7 64 bit PCs with different config.

This fix worked for our HP 2650p laptops too with Opera. Ditto about Micros Opera's deployment of their Jinit software

I made the power management changes with no success.

What did work on this machine was changing the color to 16bit instead of 32bit.

This will keep us going till we find a better fix.

Thanks

Hi,

First let me say that when i saw this post last night i was quite happy, we've been experiencing this issue with our Windows 7 32 bits installation on Dell Latitude E4310/6410, i spend hours trying to find a fix with the refresh issue, thanks for spreading the good news with the community!

We have been experiencing this issue on the E4310\E6410 running the Intel HD Graphic card only, the Nvidia graphic card works without issue for some reason, unfortunately our standard for the video card on these model is the Intel, we only have like 5 out of 325 that are running the nvidia.

As part of my testing i did the modification on both models on windows 7 x86/x64 and they both worked! i went and spread the good news to my managemnt and they were quite happy, this was a big show stopper for us, almost everyone use oracle and they coudn't get it to work unless they were connecting remotely (using the terminal server video driver works).

This morning i was given the new Latitude E6420 for testing, I installed our corp image (windows 7 x86/x64)and did the modification in power management but this time it didn't work, i have tried many different drivers but still no luck, i also tried "Balanced" instead of Maximum performance but still no luck.

Connecting remotely to the laptop works but unfortunately this is not a solution for us, laptop users only have one primary asset so they need to have it working localy.

Here is the CPU information for both models

Latitude E6410 - Intel Core i5 - M520
Latitude E6420 - Intel Core i5 - 2520M

From what I can tell, the E6410 has the Intel QM57 Express Chipset and HD Graphics, whereas the E6420 has the Intel QM67 Express Chipset and 2nd Generation HD 3000 Graphics. If the power settings aren't helping, I really only have 5 suggestions at this point, one of which you probably already tried, one that is probably going to be a dead end, one that is a squeaky possibility and one that I have no idea how to setup, test or configure and the final is (IMHO) a last resort...

But, here are my recommendations:
1) Use the latest drivers from Intel's website for the QM67 Chipset / HD Graphics Drivers respectively.

2) Contact Intel and see if they have any solutions... I think the more people that make them aware of the issue, the better chance of getting them to write some drivers to resolve the issue...

3) Check in your BIOS to see if there is a specific setting for disabling the "Dynamic Frequency" option. (crosses fingers...)

4) Figure out a way to make heads or tails out of the "POWERCFG.EXE" command which is the command line way of configuring all of the fancy power stuff in Windows (I think even XP has that...?) There might just be an option in there that will disable the setting or some sort of flag to switch things around that isn't available in the GUI. I looked at the command, but without a computer with that kind of setup, I'm not really sure where to even start.

5) Install Windows XP Mode and use the application through it. You can add the shortcut to the application where it will show up like a native Win7 app and it runs the XP mode app like it's native. Basically add a shortcut inside the XP Virtual Desktop to the: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs folder

If you figure something out, do share! I'll update the blog post with the info!

Thanks for your feedback, here is what i will try based on you recommandation.

1)Will try latest drivers from Intel

2)If issue persist i will have an email send to Intel

3)No BIOS setting for that one :(

4)I'll see what can be done using Powercfg

5)No a solution for us, we are looking at other solution like App-V so we'll see if this can fix this issue.

I will keep you guys up to date

Thanks

Hi, Thanks for the solution. It worked perfectly on a couple of i3 based dell laptops except for one i5 Dell Inspiron N5110.
The strange thing is this laptop seems to have two graphics card drivers loaded; intel and nvidia. Do you have any work around for this situation? Thanks, Charles

Ok, I find it strange that a laptop would have two video cards, especially a middle-of-the-line one... I could understand like a Precision, or Alienware having two cards but even then, I imagine they would have some sort of SLI setup which means they would have to be the same card. That got me doing some research and from what I can tell, the N5110 comes with two options for video: The Integrated Intel HD and an AMD Radeon. So, that baffles me even more that it's showing up with an nVidia?? Anywho, I'm going to take your comment at face value and assume it is showing both the Intel and nVidia cards. Since the i3 - i5 processors have the video built into the chip, it should be like the older desktop computers that have integrated video on the board, but an add-on AGP or PCI-E slot for a better video card. Once you add the new card it basically becomes the default. A lot of times you can enable / disable / set default the onboard video vs the addon card, utilizing only one or both. I would guess this is a similar situation with the laptop you have.

Now, the three suggestions I have are:
1) Go into the BIOS and see if you can disable the integrated Intel HD video. See if it is still picking up the nVidia card and running all of the graphics through it. See if the Intel card disappeared in Hardware Manager.

2) If there's no option to disable the onboard video in the BIOS, you might see about disabling the Intel graphics card in the Hardware Manager. Then, go into the nVidia control panel and see if there is a performance setting that you can slide over to maximum performance.

3) If those things aren't working, you might try uninstalling both of the video adapters, reboot the system and see which one(s) it picks up. If it is still picking up both, the best I can suggest is to disable one of them, whether it's the Intel or nVidia.

If those aren't working, then I'm at a loss without being able to get my hands on it and play around with the settings. :(

Let us know if you figure anything out!

I was so happy I could find this post, but I had no luck with my ASUS i7 laptop, even changing the Intel graphics for all options to Maximum Performance, the repaint issue still exists.
Anything else I can try?
Thanks in advance for everybody!

Can you get me the computer model of the laptop? I know that some of the i7's are supposed to have the integrated Intel video, but from my understanding, the video for an i7 computer is going to be a separate card through nVidia or ATI... Not to say that YOURS doesn't have the Intel, I'm just trying to see if I can help point you in the right direction :)

Thank you for help! Phil
the model is Asus G51J
It includes a NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 260M graphics card
I agree that is caused by display problem, since everything was fine when I remote control the laptop from somewhere by Teamviewer, but when I sit in front of it, the IE can't repaint when running the Jinitiator.

Well, I can't say this will fix it since I don't have any realworld experience with that type of setup, BUT, what I would suggest doing is to go into the nVidia control panel and look for some area's where you can adjust the performance of the card. "Usually", the card is set to a middle ground giving a nice all-around performance vs battery configuration. You might try setting that to a maximum performance though I have a haunch it won't help... Other than that, I'm not real sure what to tell you :(

Give that a try though and let us know if it works! :)

there was a option for either emphasizing performance or quality in the nvidia control panel, but nothing happen with selecting Performance.
I temporarily use XP mode to ignore the problem, hope I can find something else later. Anyway, your suggestion is still very helpful, really appreciated for your help!

Great Great Great

I spend about 6 hours to find out the reason, thanks again

Great, it works.. we have so much trouble with this problem and headache try to find out why

Thanks so much this really work for me too, God bless you

Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! 3 weeks I've been looking for a solution and nothing :-( You're a crack!

I struggled with this for two days. I suspected it was the graphics card and tried to update its drivers etc. Didn't think about power savings though.

Thank you for your post!

I like to thank you for your post. I've been working on it for 2 weeks without success. Your solution works.

Thanx A LOT!! Worked like a charm!!

It worked! Win 7 32 bit dell e 6420 THANK you thank you!

Copy the jvm.dll file from here;
Location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_211\bin\client

And paste it in;
Location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Oracle\JInitiator 1.3.1.28\bin\hotspot

Copy the ‘ .jinit ’ folder & Paste it into the user’s local profile:

C:\users\USERNAME

[The .jinit folder contains two documents; JInitiator properties and the associated certificates]

THIS STAGE WORKED IN THIS INSTANCE

(In some instances the properties folder isn’t recognized and the user still has issues accessing Oracle. To fix, delete the .jinit folder and open up the JInitiator control panel from here type in the parameters box; -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true )

You will then need to get the user to log-in and they will get prompted about the connection to which you should respond “Grant Always” twice.

Open up an Internet Explorer session and go to Tools > Manage Add-ons and Show > All add-ons

You should be able to see the below add-ons and they should all be enabled.

JInitiator 1.3.1.28
Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper
Java(tm) Plug-In SSV Helper

Close the web browser so changes can take effect and it works OK now 