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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Answer accepted by question author

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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Answer accepted by question author

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

2021-05-24T16:13:39+00:00

I'm using Windows 10 (with latest updates) and Office 365. I can reproduce it and I've SOLVEDit (at least for me).

How to reproduce?

I'm opening an untrusted Office document. For example, I've downloaded a Word document from internet. When opening this file, Word shows the yellow "Protected View" banner (don't know the exact translation, as I'm from Germany). No matter if Chrome, Visual Studio Code, etc. are started already or are started after Word has been opened. As long as this yellow warning will be displayed, I get the black banner on top of screen (sometimes it has been white).

I've noticed, that this problem does ONLY happen, when I open an untrusted Office 365 document. When the file has been approved by clicking button in the yellow banner, it does not happen anymore for this file. I can open and close Office as often as I like. Only when opening another untrusted document, the black bar is back on screen.

Solution till now?

Double tap F11 for Chrome, but this does not work for VSC etc. Alternatively, I've pressed Shift+Ctrl+Win+B (reset of graphic subsystem).

Permanent solution?

After digging a bit into it, I found a notice on internet, that one should disable graphics hardware acceleration for Office (go to File > Options > Advanced > Display > Disable hardware acceleration). Right after setting this option in Word, I've had no problems anymore. That solved it for me. Sure, it can be a workaround only, to disable hardware acceleration. But for the moment, this seem to solve it permanently.
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Anonymous

2021-06-24T19:27:51+00:00

I'm using Windows 10 (with latest updates) and Office 365. I can reproduce it and I've SOLVEDit (at least for me).

How to reproduce?

I'm opening an untrusted Office document. For example, I've downloaded a Word document from internet. When opening this file, Word shows the yellow "Protected View" banner (don't know the exact translation, as I'm from Germany). No matter if Chrome, Visual Studio Code, etc. are started already or are started after Word has been opened. As long as this yellow warning will be displayed, I get the black banner on top of screen (sometimes it has been white).

I've noticed, that this problem does ONLY happen, when I open an untrusted Office 365 document. When the file has been approved by clicking button in the yellow banner, it does not happen anymore for this file. I can open and close Office as often as I like. Only when opening another untrusted document, the black bar is back on screen.

Solution till now?

Double tap F11 for Chrome, but this does not work for VSC etc. Alternatively, I've pressed Shift+Ctrl+Win+B (reset of graphic subsystem).

Permanent solution?

After digging a bit into it, I found a notice on internet, that one should disable graphics hardware acceleration for Office (go to File > Options > Advanced > Display > Disable hardware acceleration). Right after setting this option in Word, I've had no problems anymore. That solved it for me. Sure, it can be a workaround only, to disable hardware acceleration. But for the moment, this seem to solve it permanently.

just wanted to say thanks for your input on this forum in getting this fixed. I work for a large 10,000+ company and can confirm that this issue has been an absolute nightmare to troubleshoot. It does appear to lie with office when rendered in multiple displays as per your post suggested, we’ve so far managed to mitigate the issue fully (after throwing the kitchen sink at it), by going to file > options and setting compatibility mode (for multiple displays) in word outlook and excel (PowerPoint if used) thus far no issues since. The keyboard shortcut to restart the graphics driver will get people out of a pickle but it’s only a workaround
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Anonymous

2021-07-08T03:55:31+00:00

Thanks Stevo,

I will give this a go, I have a user experiencing this issue at the moment so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

:)
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