GUI glitch in Vista Ultimate

G

Guest

About once an hour or so while using Vista Ultimate 64 bit (specs below) I
get a series of glitches that makes the PC unusable until I end the
'explorer' process and then restart it. The glitches are hard to explain.
All drop down menus become basically unusable, as clicking them (or even
right clicking) can cause the taskbar to move from bottom to top and only
have the "Notification area" show on the left, program windows will begin to
blink and render incorrectly. Ctrl-Alt-Del brings up the prompt seemingly
correctly and without error. Clicking "Start Task Manager" does bring up the
task manager, but many times only the gray frame will render until I mouse
over processes in the process list, at which time they will appear and then
disappear as soon as I move the mouse. Closing and running the
'Explorer.exe' process returns all to normal. Any ideas?

Dual AMD FX-70s
4 GB RAM
ATI Radeon X1950XTX 512MB
 
A

Andyistic

Just to be safe, I would scan the system for viruses, spyware, and other fun
processes hiding in the background.
I'm using Vista-64 myself and never had any glitches.
Maybe Vista isn't completely AMD compliant? I don't know ...

-- Andy
 
G

Guest

I have been experiencing the same sort of behavior on a Dell Dimension 8400
running 32-bit Vista Ultimate (Pentium 4 3.0GHz; ATI Radeon X300 SE 128MB).
Besides seeing the taskbar jump from the bottom to the top, I have seen:
groups of taskbar icons disappear or jump around; a large gray area (with no
text) appear in response to clicking the start button; and labeled buttons
remain visible in the task bar after the windows were closed. On a few
occasions, I have seen a box appear that indicated that explorer was closing
and restarting, and that eliminated the problem for a time. Otherwise, I
have had to reboot the computer to restore it to normal operation.
 
B

Bob Horton

Conley said:
I have been experiencing the same sort of behavior on a Dell Dimension 8400
running 32-bit Vista Ultimate (Pentium 4 3.0GHz; ATI Radeon X300 SE
128MB).
Besides seeing the taskbar jump from the bottom to the top, I have seen:
groups of taskbar icons disappear or jump around; a large gray area (with
no
text) appear in response to clicking the start button; and labeled buttons
remain visible in the task bar after the windows were closed. On a few
occasions, I have seen a box appear that indicated that explorer was
closing
and restarting, and that eliminated the problem for a time. Otherwise, I
have had to reboot the computer to restore it to normal operation.

I noticed you were both using ATI video cards. Are you sure that you have
stable Vista video drivers? If more than one version is available, you
might want to experiment and see if one or the other works better on your
system.

HTH.
 
G

Guest

ATI has released at least two non-beta Vista drivers for this card. I
believe that I experienced the same problems with both the 7.1 and 7.2
packages. I do hope that a future revision solves the problem.

As noted, the only error message that I have seen referred to explorer
ceasing to function. Would the video driver actually be critical to causing
explorer to stop working, e.g., after the system had been running, but not in
active use, for some length of time?
 
G

Guest

I had thought that might be a problem and updated all of my drivers to the
newer Vista compatible ones with the catalyst control center from ATI to no
avail. Wierd thing is that it happens seemingly randomly. I've been shutting
down programs trying to isolate a possible problem causer, but it doesn't
seem to make a difference.
 
G

Guest

I've seen those symptoms as well on mine. Here are some screen shots:
http://seventhwhiskey.com/glitch.jpg
http://seventhwhiskey.com/glitch2.jpg
http://seventhwhiskey.com/glitch3.jpg

While they all are in Aero with a sidebar, the same glitch occurs in other
themes (including classic) with/without the sidebar. Vista will not allow me
to take screen shots with the (blank) start menu open or with the run dialog
(also glitchy) open if explorer is glitching out (gives me a "ding" and
doesn't copy the screen). When there is no glitch, I can take a screen shot
whenever I please.
 
G

Guest

Since I logged on here, I have seen a number of threads referring to problems
similar to ours, and I have seen various "explanations" proferred (bad Dell
bios, bad ATI video driver, etc.).

Today, I found an article (KB 932406 dated February 27, 2007) that indicates
that "[a]fter a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for a long
time, the desktop screen may stop updating correctly ...," causing problems
with, among other things, the behavior of the "toolbar." The article states
that a hotfix can be obtained from
Microsoft Customer Support.
 

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