Black or White bars at top or bottom of screen

Anonymous

Hi all,

I am technician at an IT company and we are pulling out our hair over an issue with one of our clients using Google Calendar.

They are 2 users, both using different computers, both running the latest version of Windows 10 and Chrome.

The symptoms happen at different times on both machines. The symptoms can vary but are generally a form of bar on the top or bottom of the browser. They have to restart the computer for the issue to disappear. They can work around it by reducing the screen size from full screen, to something slightly smaller.

We have tried Firefox, Edge and Chrome Canary with same symptoms, updating all drivers, BIOS, re installation of the OS and still issues are occurring. We originally thought the issues were graphics related, but they seem to only be happening when in Google Calendar. Seems like an OS bug?

We have also turns hardware acceleration off in the browsers.

I have included some screenshots as well. The black bars at the top began in Firefox on Google Calendar and have penetrated other windows that have been placed on top (Acrobat in this example).

We are using an Intel NUC and a Laptop.

Any advise would be most appreciated.

Regards, Sam

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Anonymous

Hello everyone,

You can use the shortcut CONTROL + SHIFT + WIN + B to reset the graphics adapter on affected machines. This will get rid of the white/black bars without navigating through menus.

All the fixes I've seen (Intel graphics panel, reboot computer, change resolution, etc) just reset the graphics driver anyway. For example, when you change the resolution on a computer, the monitor(s) shuts off for a moment and then comes back up. This is because the graphics adapter reset.

I don't have a permanent fix unfortunately, but this is a quick band-aid fix that takes less than a second when you see this problem occurring. I've observed this problem over the last ~6 months and am disappointed that some of my organization's fully updated computers (Windows 10 1809 with all updates as of March 26th, 2019) still display this problem.

Thanks.

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Anonymous

Solved! After a few years of just accepting this problem, a tech guy at Best Buy found the answer. He worked on it for an hour or so and voila! In google chrome (chrome://extensions), he eliminated the extension on stock tracker program and the bar is now GONE! I had the same problem on my other computer so I made that change and it's gone! Hopefully, that or something similar will work for everyone else who has suffered with this problem. Good luck!

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113 additional answers

Anonymous

2019-07-02T18:33:20+00:00

I have had a number of replies to a post I made on this question several months ago. FWIW, below is the best work-around (not a fix, as the issue continues to occur), at least for my computer. Thanks JReid!

JReid_398

Hello everyone,

You can use the shortcut CONTROL + SHIFT + WIN + B to reset the graphics adapter on affected machines. This will get rid of the white/black bars without navigating through menus.
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Anonymous

2019-08-06T23:11:55+00:00
I realise these posts are slightly old, I also have a customer experiencing these issues.

What I have figured out:
- The issue is directly related to Windows Scaling- while the issue is occurring if you adjust the Windows Scaling- the issue immediately goes away. I have heard some people have had success resolving the issue by playing with the advanced scaling options, unfortunately not here.
- Others have also had success with turning off HW acceleration within Chrome, Office and any commonly used apps- no difference here.
- Issue is not HW related, units have been swapped out for brand new units, different models and different vendors- Issue continues.
- Different versions of Windows does not make any difference- 1709, 1803, 1809 and 1903 (RS5), have been tried- no difference.
- Latest version of Video driver from Intel does not make any difference.
- Latest BIOS, drivers and FW updated- no change (These units a commercial units from a Top vendor).
Microsoft will always blame the Vendor when it is their problem.

This is 100% a Microsoft glitch related windows scaling- Yet the Muppets do not do anything about it.

To be honest I am not surprised all the hallmarks of a MS product- Glitchy, buggy and inconsistent and MS will always blame the other party....

Get used to it as MS will do nothing.

Common Microsoft, prove me wrong and address this issue!

I work for a major vendor.

Thanks,
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Anonymous

2019-01-03T23:12:19+00:00

In an effort to diagnose the issue I uninstalled Chrome and reinstalled (after saving the bookmarks of course) and the issue returned almost immediately. Then noticed the issue in IE too (yes just doing diagnostics).

Once I rebooted we tested the same sites again and discovered that the horizontal black (or sometimes white) bars were the same size as bars that were popping up. So our description of the problem became "popup bars are invisible".

Hope this helps (disabling hardware acceleration didn't, and neither did maximizing or restoring with the squre in the underline, square, x, on the top right of the window. We'll try F11 next time).
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