My messed up desktop region

[ecookman]

I thought some of you may be baffled by this. (the black is inaccessible[mouse doesn't move that far]). I don't see anything in the top left where the second windows logo is.

[apython1992]

I feel stupid for asking, but have you tried rebooting?

[Tony]

If you have a dual-screen setup, where the screens run different resolutions, then they will not lineup and create an "inaccessible" region.

[ecookman]

oh dear - I have rebooted, restored/removed/disabled,reinstalled every driver, hard restarted, removed battery held in power button for 45 seconds, tried to see if the computer thought there was another monitor attached and re-imaged my computer which lead me to believe that I have a software malfunction of some sort. When I boot off of the Win7 disk I have the normal desktop region, but when I re-imaged my computer the stupid top left region came back
so I need to backup and put everything back manually. Now its just a matter of getting myself to do it.

[ecookman]

@tony I investigated that but that doesn't seem to be the case

[ecookman]

Bump - OH MY GOD, its back.....

[ProgrammingFun]

ecookman @ Thu Jan 12, 2012 7:31 pm wrote:

Bump - OH MY GOD, its back.....

IT'S CHRONIC...KILL THE COMPUTER!

[ecookman]

ProgrammingFun @ Thu Jan 12, 2012 8:22 pm wrote:

ecookman @ Thu Jan 12, 2012 7:31 pm wrote:

Bump - OH MY GOD, its back.....

IT'S CHRONIC...KILL THE COMPUTER!

But seriously, does anyone what causes this?

[DemonWasp]

I don't know what causes this, but here are some things you could do to narrow it down for us:

1. When did this start happening? Does this happen after any particular program (particularly any games that change your resolution)?

2. Is it persistent? How did you make it go away between July and today?

3. Does this happen on other operating systems? You could test with a Linux LiveCD to make life easy.

4. How is your monitor connected to your PC, and how is the graphics card connected to the motherboard? Is this a laptop?

5. What are the make and model of your graphics card and motherboard, plus the graphics driver version installed?

6. Do you ever change your monitor setup? Such as plugging in or removing new screens, switching to display on a projector, etc?

[md]

Non-fix that'll definitely make the issue go away: install Arc Linux and ditch Windows.

[mirhagk]

Actually you can't say definitely. What if it's a hardware issue?

[md]

Based on my experience with Windows, and the nature of the error it is definitely a software issue. Likely an odd interaction between some drivers, the win32 GUI layer, and whatever other software is installed on the machine.

I'm willing to bet $1 that the same issue doesn't appear when the machine is booted into a linux livecd environment.

[mirhagk]

Lol so am I, odds are it is between the drivers and win32 gui, but I was just saying you can't say definitely.

[md]

mirhagk @ 2012-01-13, 1:43 pm wrote:

Lol so am I, odds are it is between the drivers and win32 gui, but I was just saying you can't say definitely.

On the contrary, hardware failures exhibit an entirely different sort of behaviour which is entirely predictable. Based on the fact that the mouse can't enter the region I can be 100% certain that it's a software issue. Now, if the mouse could enter the black region *and* there was some other weird graphical glitches as well, then it could possibly be hardware (though extremely unlikely).

[mirhagk]

Well what if the graphics card, or the monitor itself is reporting an incorrect size, and it's malfunctioning and drawing the wrong stuff.