Taskbar phantoms?

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renee88 · #1 Post by **renee88** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:23 am

Lately I have had something weird going on with my toolbar. After I close a program, it still shows up on the taskbar. If I try to right click, it does nothing. This happened with a program, so I rebooted. Then it happened with another program. Is this some weird bug? When I do alt tab, it doesn't show up and when I pull up the task manager it's not there. But it's sitting in my toolbar as if it's open. Ideas?

astro · #2 Post by **astro** » Mon May 08, 2006 2:00 am

This seems like a typical Windows glitch, though it could be something more serious (e.g. an infection of some sort).

Is this directly related to the T60 model Thinkpad? If not, I suspect the moderators will be moving this post very shortly...

renee88 · #3 Post by **renee88** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:48 am

I don't know if it's related to the T60. It's happening on my T60 and it didn't happen on my last computer.

#4 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon May 08, 2006 10:27 am

Actually, I would suspect the problem to be caused by the video adapter, driver, or software. What I would try first is turning off hardware acceleration on the video adapter's property page, and see if the problem remains. On my T42 with the ATI video adapter, I find this setting by right-clicking on an open area of the desktop, choose Properties > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshoot tab. There is also a Enable write combining box I can uncheck on the Troubleshoot tab as another test. Since you will not have the same video adapter as I do, your properties pages are probably different, but you should be able to find a hardware acceleration adjustment setting.

Also, make sure you have the latest video adapter driver available from IBM/Lenovo.

EDIT: I've seen phantoms like this from time to time. They are caused by the video adapter not writing to the screen correctly from memory. The program you closed out is not running, it's just that the display needs to be refreshed. Probably if you log out of the desktop, then log back in, you will find the display looking normal.

I suppose the only solution (if this bothers you too much) is to turn down/off hardware acceleration and perhaps not have the Enable write combining box checked. Hopefully a better video driver will come out soon and fix your problem.

renee88 · #5 Post by **renee88** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:10 am

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I also just posted to a windows message board.

#6 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:21 am

I said the above, but it's possible that you have a weak or failing GPU (graphics processing unit - a more proper name for what I was calling the video adapter above). If no one else is reporting the same problem, you may check with Lenovo to see about warranty service.

davidspalding · #7 Post by **davidspalding** » Mon May 08, 2006 3:59 pm

renee88 wrote:Lately I have had something weird going on with my toolbar. After I close a program, it still shows up on the taskbar. If I try to right click, it does nothing. This happened with a program, so I rebooted. Then it happened with another program. Is this some weird bug? When I do alt tab, it doesn't show up and when I pull up the task manager it's not there. But it's sitting in my toolbar as if it's open. Ideas?

I see this happen regularly with some programs. It's annoying, but without know what program you're experiencing this with, it's hard to know what to tell you.

When you say it was in Task Manager, so you mean the Applications tab, or the Processes tab?

#8 Post by **Kyocera** » Mon May 08, 2006 5:02 pm

I would try doing some basic troublshooting first, defrag, checkdisk, scandisk etc. Maybe do a system restore back a ways and see if the behavior is still there. Would not suspect the gpu though.

Taskbar phantoms?

Taskbar phantoms?

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