Black or White bars at top or bottom of screen

Anonymous
2018-06-18T23:22:01+00:00

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

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2019-03-26T15:04:26+00:00

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
2021-11-30T00:53:12+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2020-03-05T07:07:32+00:00

    Thanks for the post.

    We tried everything, including this. For us made no difference. I did note that this one ressolved the issue for some people.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-03-18T14:11:19+00:00

    Exact same issue here starting today.

    This is on a custom PC that I built half a year ago and never showed any issues. A few hours ago I started working from home (due to COVID-19) and effectively only changed two things on this PC:

    • Started using Skype (the Windows Store version), it was already installed but not yet set up.
    • Installed the full Office 365 package. (NOT the Windows Store version)

    Applications which now show a broken behavior include: Firefox, Thunderbird and the WhatsApp Desktop client.

    SHIFT + CTRL + WIN + B fixes the issue, temporarily.

    Windows Version: Windows 10 PRO, 1909, Build 18363.720

    GPU + CPU: (Not sure these matter since people at work with different chips are having the same problem for a while now).

    NVIDIA RTX 2070 S

    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

    Two Monitor configuration, 1x 1920x1200 and 1x 1440x2560

    Scaling is set to 100%, the option to let Windows fix blurry apps is enabled. (Default settings, never changed since Windows was installed).

    To me this strongly suggests that either Office 365 or Skype interferes with the Windows UI or graphics driver.

    (Also, I think it's funny how the Microsoft Support bots haven't showed up yet to tell us we should run sfc /scannow or give some other useless advice).

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T11:05:34+00:00

    I have the same problem, I think it has to do something with the graphic unit/driver/settings, if I have the black or white bar, and just remove my hdmi/displayport cable, so the whole graphic settings need to readjust as I have a Dual Monitor Setup, and I plug the cable in again, the bars have disappeared... Also for me this started when I recently changed my Graphic card to a rtx2060 up from a gtx760 sli.

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