asked on 12/16/2019

Phantom window outline on desktop

Hello, I have a very strange issue, this time on one of my W10 PCs (not a customer's).

There seems to be a transparent window on the desktop, as you can see in this image:

The window isn't there immediately after boot, but after an undetermined amount of time it will appear.

I can also enlarge it or shrink it but I can't close it. And I don't know where it comes from.

Do you have any suggestions? What can I try to find out the origin of the window? I've tried closing non-essential background processes, to no avail. I have A LOT of processes running in the background.

PC Desktops Windows 10 Windows OS

Last Comment

Brian B

6/17/2020

Alex

12/16/2019

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/winlister.html

use winlister, it should show you the window and then you can close the application/fix it.

Regards
Alex

Daniele Brunengo

12/16/2019

ASKER

Thanks, I'll try it out and report back. Nirsoft has a solution for everything. Almost.

Qlemo

12/16/2019

Process Explorer from www.sysinternals.com allows to drag a target over the window to get immediately to the corresponding process, that makes things easier.

Brian B

12/16/2019

A little more crude, but starting in safe mode should at least tell you if it is something third party causing it and you can use msconfig to narrow it down from there.

Daniele Brunengo

12/19/2019

ASKER

Obviously since I wrote this it still has to show up, so... waiting for it.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Daniele Brunengo

6/17/2020

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Brian B

6/17/2020

No problem, your computer knows what will happen if it doesn't behave for us. :-)

Thanks for the update.