Ok, I have this annoying problem and I can't seem to find a solution to fix this.

Now I'm experiencing this annoying problem I've never had before, not sure if its my new hardware thats doing it or a Windows XP x64 issue. There seems to be black shadows appearing on my Windows session, it happens randomly and I'm not sure what is triggering it. Here is an example if you don't know what I'm talking about:

http://www.geocities.com/johnvuong2000/distorted.JPG

Help please?

I've had similar problems after sorting large amounts of data. I think it has to do with caching data into memory like file names and the meta data that Windows can display in the tooltip if you hover a file. In every time a reboot made the problems go away. I've only had the strange black squares (and eventual context menu display corruption) occurr after moving large amounts of files around, but it could also be caused by another program.

What is happening is that explorer is supposed to display a transparency (like an alpha channel) but it does not have enough resources to display it, so it elects not to and you actually "see" the alpha channel/transparency layer of the GUI instead of it being clear. Its kind of a lacking in image technology since all images still rely on coordinates and having to be 4 sided squares or rectangles, as there are no true dynamic images.

I've had this happen on earlier versions of Windows, icons and screen widgets just turn into black blobs. It was usually caused by some form of memory leak in an application that used a lot of system memory. You might look for a newer video driver(outside chance), otherwise you're going to have to have some sort of system logging going on so you can see what's causing the problem. Tracking these things down without some sort of system logging is kind of futile unless you can nail it down to one action or application that causes the problem every time.

98SE used to do this a lot when it ran out of heap memory when I was doing a lot of picture editing with a screwed-up editor.

Stan

As a part of tweaking and tuning XP for top performance, I always eliminate all the fancy screen stuff.

From my XPTweaks list on my website:

Increasing Graphics Performance
By default, Windows-XP turns on a lot of shadows, fades, slides etc to menu items.
Most simply slow down their display. To turn these off selectively:
Right click on the My Computer icon
Select Properties
Click on the Advanced tab
Under Performance, click on the Settings button
To turn them all off, select Adjust for best performance
Turn ON: Show window contents while dragging
Apply the change and close the window.
Graphics performance will be enhanced.

****************************************
That may or may not solve your graphics problem, but it sure can't hurt.

Cheers!
Andromeda

If you're using a theme pack of some kind, it may be related to that.

Sounds like bad video drivers to me, is that new hardware a video card by any chance, or did you update the vid drivers recently? Some nvidia x64 drivers are known for that specific problem.

I've changed all my hardware except my video card, and I pretty much used Nlite to create my Windows CD with all the latest updates and latest drivers slipstreamed. And yes I'm using the latest video card driver, downloaded from NVIDIA. I probably suspect its buggy drivers from NVIDIA, I guess, everything works fine here.

I'm not using any theme packs at all, all I did was download this skin and patched the UXTheme file with Nlite, so I don't think thats the problem, being using this skin for a while now without any problems at all.

But thanks for your replies.

Hi

Just to follow up, I have the same problem under XP x64 too
Laptop dell latitude D830
Video card Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M with Forcewave 174.31 driver
GUI software related : Altdesk and ObjectDock Plus

Disabled all special effect, and configured Adjust for tbest performance

Reboot and it's gone.

strange behaviour.

I get this problem as well on my Xp x64 system running a nvidia graphics card.

I could always solve the problem by just rebooting my computer.

I'll have to try running classic theme to see if that'll solve it for me.

Well, if a reboot always solves it, then it's likely a driver issue, or a desktop heap resource issue (desktop heap is a memory area in which all GUI objects are drawn and stored, so if you run out you start to get wierd toolbar, icon, button, etc. behavior like this). Also knowing it's x64 and nvidia, I'd go for the former rather than the latter (or the former CAUSING the latter ... ).

Its an issue with the NVIDIA x64 drivers:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=67608

A new driver has been released and they still haven't fixed it yet. How irritating.

The only workaround is to go to your display properties and go to the troubleshooting section and set the hardware acceleration bar down to 4 - which doesn't really have a huge impact on gaming anyways. Or just reboot your computer.

Sounds a lot like what I said
(I wish there were x64 drivers for all my hardware actually...)

Well, as long as it's not a hardware issue in my computer, I'm not too concerned about it, I reboot of my computer every 12 hours isn't that big of a deal.

It would be nice to have the issue resolved eventually though.