Context Menu Issue

AnAngelsDeath

AnAngelsDeath

Gawd
Joined
Feb 6, 2006
Messages
813
As of about 2-days ago, when I right click on something such as Recycle Bin or a program in my System Tray and then click on something in the drop down menu after it completes the action, which ever option from the menu i clicked on stays on my screen. Like right now, I was using my task manager and I right clicked on a process and selected Go To Process, and now a bar saying "Go To Process" from that menu is still on my screen, it wont go away, and it says on top of everything so now matter what i can see it. It started a couple days ago and only did it once in awhile, but now it does it anytime i use a context menu.

And the only way to make it go away is to either reboot my system or open a game so that I am taken away from the desktop. and then once i close the game and go back to the desktop its gone. But it's really annoying having to do that.

Does anyone know wtf is causing this and how to fix it. In all my years of using/building/repairing PC's, I've never had this problem, and I don't know where to begin fixing it. So any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
this is seriously getting annoying. Just in the last 10min of doing some stuff on my PC I had to open World of Warcraft and close it like 12 times, just to get that stuff to go away each time i click on an option from a context menu/drop down menu
 
Yea i thought it could be a shell extension too. I only have shell extensions enabled in 4 programs. MagicISO/Disc, WinRAR, MalwareBytes, Super Anti Spyware....oh and I Microsoft Security Essentials, so 5 i guess. So I will try what you said, and post my results. I will disable them all, and see if that stops it, and if it does, then i will re-enable one at a time until it starts doing it again to see which one is causing it.
 
Snowknight26 said:
Most likely a AMD driver issue.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1547431
Click to expand...

well from the lil bit of that which i read, it seems if it is a driver issue from AMD, then there's not much to do it about it. Some people think its a Kernel issue. And apparently disabling menu fade can sometimes stop it, so i am gonna try that also. And as far as my GPU drivers, there are no new drivers for the card on this laptop. This is just my spare laptop I use when I am not at home. It has a Radeon Mobility HD4250 in it, and they stopped updating it awhile back. The only newer driver I found for it, completely screwed up my system when i tried to update with it, and so i had to rollback to the one I already had. So I don't think that is the issue, since I've been on the drivers for awhile now and the problem just started a few days ago.
 
Fort_Major said:
What updates did you recently install (Windows updates?)
Click to expand...

I can't remember now, it was an auto-update thing. When i shutdown, went out of the desktop to the windows screen, and it just said installing updates X of X . Afterwards I looked up what they were when i booted into windows next time, but I can't remember what they were now. there was only like 3 updates tho. I can't seem to get this to stop doing that, it's really annoying and making me avoid using context menu's at all costs lol (that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get what i mean)
 
Try disabling Desktop composition in system settings (also disable Aero for that matter) just for the test.
If it's an AMD driver issue, your only bet is to search for a workaround until they fix it.
Try to run another directX program, or play a movie while this happens, or a browser with a flash animation in it and see if this heals the problem with the leftover bar.

Few weeks ago I stumbled upon another bug in Windows Aero - previews in taskbar stopped showing and the highlight of the taskbar buttons was sticking even when my cursor leaves the last button. A way to heal it was to shift+right_click a button in the taskbar (to show the standard context menu) which immediately fixed it without restart.
 
Ok I downloaded that SHellExView program and I disabled everything that wasn't a Microsoft App, and that didn't fix the problem. I updated my Graphics Drivers, that didn't help. And So I don't know wtf is going on the. The only suggestion I haven't tried yet is disabling Aero cause I don't see where that option is. Unless all you meant was just pick a theme that isn't one of the aero themes, which I already have done, and I tried disabling Transparency as someone else said, that didn't help. And I have found any thing on google relating this to an AMD Driver issue or any workarounds.


So far the only thing that makes the leftover bar go away is either restarting the PC obviously, or Loading into a game and then closing it and when it gets back to the desktop its gone, but as soon as i use a context menu like for example, right click Recycle bin and click "Empty Recycle Bin", then it happens again and the Empty Recycle Bin is stuck on my screen til i either restart or load into a game again. This friggin annoying as hell. The leftover bar stays on top of any window i have open so its always there, covering shit up.

I have not had such an annoying issue like this is forever, and usually I am always able to fix it or find a work-around, but this one just doesn't seem to want to be fixed.

Any other ideas please ?
 
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A technical suggestion; Load up procmon, and filter out everything but explorer.exe, do whatever causes the issue, and see if explorer is failing on some function or getting an access denied or something. Have you tried safe mode to see if the problem exist there as well? If it disappears in safe mode, it's probably something you loaded onto the system, if it happens in safe mode then something in the OS is probably corrupt (or there is a hardware problem) and you might need a re-install (or try "sfc /scannow" from command prompt) to fix it or determine that some piece of hardware is failing.
 
tedych said:
Try disabling Desktop composition in system settings (also disable Aero for that matter) just for the test.
If it's an AMD driver issue, your only bet is to search for a workaround until they fix it.
Try to run another directX program, or play a movie while this happens, or a browser with a flash animation in it and see if this heals the problem with the leftover bar.

Few weeks ago I stumbled upon another bug in Windows Aero - previews in taskbar stopped showing and the highlight of the taskbar buttons was sticking even when my cursor leaves the last button. A way to heal it was to shift+right_click a button in the taskbar (to show the standard context menu) which immediately fixed it without restart.
Click to expand...


Snowknight26 said:
Disable 'Fade out menu items after clicking' in appearance and performance settings.
Click to expand...


^^ What these guys are saying is probably more spot on than the things about spyware/malware. It's not mal-ware.
 
It wasn't any of my Shell Extensions or anything to do with Theme settings on Win 7. It was the damn monitor. Whenever I am at home, I plug my Laptop into this spare Monitor I got for free last month. Its just some cheap-o 21" monitor from some brand I never even heard of til i got this monitor (and as someone who builds PC's for a living, I know just about every brand, but as i Said, I never heard of this one. My friend who gave it to me, got it for free for opening a new Checking Account at some bank hahahaha). and its about 6yrs old lol, doesn't have very high resolution options or anything......Anyways, I am letting a friend borrow it while she waits for her new monitor to come in the mail from NewEgg, so instead of plugging my laptop into that POS I plugged it into my Samsung SmartTV, and BAM ! it stopped leaving the ghost image from the context menu. So then to test it further, I plugged it into one of my nice ASUS monitors that I use for my Desktop, and still, no issues, so it definitely was that Crappy monitor. I never noticed this, because I haven't taken this laptop outside of the house since it started happening, so its only been plugged into that one monitor til the other day. That was the one thing I never thought of. I tried so many other things to try and fix this issue, but never once did I think of running the laptop without an external monitor or plugged into a different external monitor. So yea, all is well again.

So if anyone ever has this same problem on your Desktop or with your laptop while running through an external monitor, and can't seem to figure out why, try running it through a different monitor and see if that's the issue
 
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