Windows taskbar randomly pops up while watching full screen movies

Tanquen

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
1,225
Just hoping someone here may have seen the issue. I’ve had the same setup for years but in the last few months when watching movies full screen the Windows taskbar will display for a second and then go away. Lots of Googling has shown many with the issue but none of the fixes worked for me.

It seems a program is causing the taskbar to have focus but I can’t find it. I’ve tried disabling services and checking event viewer for anything that is triggering at the time. Some also said it was the Windows DPI setting being set above 100% with or without the Windows XP style DPI scaling was the cause but mine is set to default.
 
Have you tried a new clean install? What os are you using?
 
I'm on Windows 7 and trying to wait for Windows 10 before a reinstall.
 
does it still happen using different video players? like would it sill happen with media player classic or smooth video project? or only windows media player?
 
It happens with PowerDVD and with Amazon Prime in Chrome and IE. Its a pain as watching a 2 hour movie it may only happen once or twice.

When watching full screen video any notifications should be ignored and the task bar should not be shown but something is causing it to pop up mostly a pops up and goes away right away sometimes it pops up and stays.
 
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I've seen this type of situation before and it had nothing to do with the video drivers. There was an active icon in the notification area (far right by the clock) on the taskbar. The bar would pop-up but because the video was playing the notification wouldn't show. I'd check the notification area first.
 
I’ve seen some posts about a notification being the cause but I’ve looked through all the Windows event logs when it happens and see nothing there. Also, the taskbar shows no new notification that I can see the taskbar just pops up out of nowhere. I may try removing all notification from the Notification Area and see if that helps.
 
Is your taskbar on auto-hide? Try turning it off, if that is the case.
 
No, I could never get used to that setting. Always bumping the bottom of the screen with the mouse.

I did try it with that setting but I still had the issue.

It did seem to go away when I disabled Aero but I did not try it for very long as you then you get horizontal tearing in the videos.
 
Try running Process Monitor and watch what happens behind the scenes when it happens.

I may give that a try but it looks like it has thousands of entry’s a second and I'm lucky to know the minute it happened let alone what I'm looking for. I’ll try it the next time I watch.
 
Any wireless devices hooked to the PC?

I have always used a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard when watching the TV in the other room. I do get a little pause in the playback when the mouse goes into power saving mode but no taskbar. This also bugs me as it did not happen in the past but at least I know it’s the mouse though I don’t know why the mouse breaking its connection to the PC causes a little glitch in the playback.
 
I asked because that has caused issues in the past for me. Whether power saving issues or more likely phantom inputs. Unplug your wireless stuff and see if that drops the issue.
 
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