NotesTimer Goes Crazy

Hello

I have seen snippets about possible bugs/features of Notestimer, but nothing concrete. I have a news ticker which takes a document from a view and displays its subject for 5 seconds before going onto the next document in the view. It works well for most of the time, but occassionally the hourglass appears on screen flickering madly and I have to rely on good old Kill Notes to get my client back. I have also noticed that scrolling within a window has the same effect whilst the timer is running.

Is there any documentation/fixes for this?

Also does anyone know of a way to disable the timer if the focus is placed on another window (the ticker is on a welcome screen, but causes a flicker every 5 seconds if the user has changed databases etc)

Many thanks