Black bars on Windows apps

[Álvaro]

I am having a pretty weird issue since 6-7 months back. Never paid much attention but now with the 1903 update it kind of escalated.

It all started like this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/bit3vu

​

Then everything changed when the 1903 nation attacked :

​

Seems like Metro-depending menus and store apps are affected by this bug. Text appears normal for the first 3-4 seconds, then is gone. I was suggested to reinstall GPU drivers (from NVIDIA, the only thing which changed besides the 1903 update in my computer) which solved the Start menu issue but nothing else. It also made me reinstall the SBX Pro drivers as the NVIDIA HD audio seems to conflict with them.

Anyone had this issue (I am trying to figure out if it is a Clevo-specific thing or a Windows-specific issue)?

 

[ubuysa]

It's a Windows thing. My guess is that you allowed Windows Update to upgrade your system to 1903? Upgrading-in-place like this is known to cause all sorts of niggly issues for some users. I'm pretty sure all your problems will be solved by a clean reinstall of Windows 1903. Use the Media Creation Tool to make a bootable USB stick (8GB min size) and boot that. Choose a custom install and delete the four UEFI system partitions (System (EFI), Reserved (MSR), Recovery, and Windows). Select the Unallocated Space that results and just click Next, the installer will recreate all the necessary UEFI partitions and install Windows.

Once Windows is installed run Windows Update repeatedly until no more updates are found, you'll need to reboot several times too. This will (should) install all the necessary drivers, check in Device Manager afterwards to be sure. See how your graphics looks after that, if you still have these issues then it's almost certainly a hardware issue.

Note that a reinstall will delete everything on the system drive, so if you have user data on there too you'll need to back it up first.

 

[Álvaro]

I think this was happening before I upgdaded to 1903, but didn´t happen immediately after upgrading to 1803 (the last upgrade I remember). I´ll give it a shot if I have time though (currently writing my thesis)

 

[Álvaro]

Found the issue.
I realised that when I boot in Safe Mode, this does not happen. And reinstalling the NVIDIA drivers solved SOME of the issues. So I reset the global settings to default et voilá, problem solved. So it was some freakish setting I modified (in nvidiainspector probably) that was doing the wibbly wobbly timey wimey dance.

 

[SpyderTracks]

the wibbly wobbly timey wimey dance.

Ha! That’s the best description for the issue I’ve heard!

Glad you got it sorted!

 

[Álvaro]

I found the setting...its the G-Sync. Another user in that Reddit post also had a G-sync monitor, I told him to see if this is also the issue (I only know of this user and another in Windows forums, so must be either a combination of factors or not many people bother with windowed G-Sync. I had it enabled for windowed and fullscreen, and setting it back to fullscreen only removed the issue. Seems that windowed G-Sync has been an issue since 1803, which is when I started seeing the bug (https://forums.geforce.com/default/...3-windowed-g-sync-broken-hotfix-released-/52/).

Might want to put this somewhere for G-Sync owners because this took me almost six months to figure out (granted, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed).