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

2020-11-24T15:08:37+00:00

I don't know if this was already mentioned. We have some HP PC with Intel CPUs where we have this issue.

Now we also see this issue on Windows 2019 RDS Server (running on Intel Xeon, 2012R2 Hyper-V cluster) connected to it with a HP Thinclient (HP T640). Fortunately it is only 1 user affected but unfortunately the user faces the black or white bar on a daily base. Simply reconnecting to the RDS or moving the window with Win + Arrow will fix it temporarly.

We found out so far that Adobe Reader is mostly involved when the (black or white) bar appears on top of the screen.
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Anonymous

2020-11-16T14:54:46+00:00

Thank you JReid_398!

Pressing Cntrl+Shift+Win+B solved the problem for me:)
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Anonymous

2020-11-04T15:03:12+00:00
This has been happening to me since a recent Windows update. I thought it was my monitors, so upgraded both of those but it did not fix the issue.

Shown in the picture below (I have hidden my recent links), whenever I open Windows Explorer in a monitor with Chrome (or other apps, including Microsoft apps) running, when I minimize Windows Explorer, the top of the monitor goes blank. Even if I close Windows Explorer or other Microsoft apps open, the blank bar does not go away.

This is not resolved when I turn the monitor off and back on again!

NOTE: For those still looking for fixes, here are some options that worked for me as temporary fixes:
1. Unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in
2. Reset any display property for the monitor and save the new setting in Windows Control Panel / Windows Settings
3. Closing all apps and then restarting them
For me, if I make sure to keep Explorer full-screen and open it first, this seems to prevent the issue in most cases. Not sure why; seems to happen on my system whenever I minimize certain MS windows.

This is a pervasive issue, as I am in and out of my file explorer regularly throughout my work day with this system. Serious bug, and deeply annoying over the course of a day. It sounds like Microsoft / Windows have yet to propose a fix, but I really hope we get something soon.
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