Why are counter update faster in Windows when moving the mouse ?

[CruNcher]

Hi im trying to find out something you know when you have counters that show you a value rising for example something like download speed i realized that some counters in Windows XP at least rise faster when moving the mouse (update time of the mouse input) ? does somebody experience the same on Vista and 7 ? is this a generic Windows problem (being no realtime OS) ? or is it most likely a hardware problem (bad Motherboard design) ?

Could make a Video it's funny :) (btw it doesn't interfers with the actual time of the operation itself it's just a visual thing) so the update time for a counter is say @ 1 sec and by moving the mouse you change it to a lower value :D being able to reach very high update time by moving the mouse as fast as possible ;)

[Dark Shikari]

Interrupts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_interrupt)

[CruNcher]

I guessed so it might also explain this behaviour on my PC
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=140767
http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=16493

though i tried to Debug this for a long time now and found no solution yet :(

everything looks normal see here (at least no visible conflicts)
http://s10.directupload.net/images/090409/63t2883u.png

but yeah if it's driver or even Hardware interoperability related i guess i wont find it anyways as it's to complex and i would need to go down the Windows DDK Debug layer, might be also that it's just how the XP Kernel works and might got better in Vista and Win 7 (as there where many Kernel I/O improvements since Vista over XP)

[Dr.Khron]

I've noticed this for a long time. In my ignorance, I always assumed that it was the graphic subsystem being parsimonious with the screen updates.

Interrupts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_interrupt)

Looks like the answer is WAY more complicated. Thanks for the link.