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Periodically when I select a menu command, the label or selected option gets "stuck" on screen and won't go away. I can close all open applications, including whichever one I was using when it got stuck, but it still won't go away.

In the screenshot below, I opened an new instance of IE just to show how the label stays on top. The label was not created by this instance of IE.

Lingering menu command label

(I added the circle in MS Paint. That part isn't stuck.)

The label that gets stuck is the first menu command I select in IE. If a label is already stuck, a new one does not get stuck (regardless of which instance(s) of IE are involved). Based on this knowledge, I now just open IE on my secondary monitor, carefully open the context menu so the Properties command is in the bottom corner, and click it. This is not a solution.

The floating label never moves and is transparent to mouse input (if I click it, it's as if I clicked the item behind it).

The label does not go away if I close all running applications. I haven't tried stopping services or closing system tray items like Live Mesh.

The label does go away if I change the screen resolution and then change it back.

Any ideas how I can stop this from happening? It's happened a half dozen times and it's becoming quite disrupting to my work.

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  • 1
    I had this happen a LOT in the betas of Win7, particularly when executing in a VM. It doesn't happen anymore, but I'm not sure exactly when it changed. I suggest updating your video card driver and, one by one, disabling startup programs until it stops. I think it was either my driver, UltraMon, or WinSplit Revolution, but never narrowed it down.
    – OwenP
    Oct 18, 2009 at 17:43
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    I have some programs do that in Vista. I don't have a solution. Oct 18, 2009 at 22:05
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    Happens. Start - Run - "tskill dwm" or kill DWM.EXE from task manager, it will restart instantly with menu items gone. Oct 7, 2013 at 18:47
  • 1
    Happened to me some minutes ago. It wasn't a tooltip, but a menu item stuck on screen when IE11 devtools crashed. The tskill dwn trick didn't work, while changing the color depth did.
    – MaxArt
    Jan 15, 2014 at 14:56
  • 1
    Internet Explorer 11 seems to be a big offender of leaving these ghost menu selections on the screen. Mar 20, 2014 at 1:04

11 Answers 11

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The problem was introduced back in Windows 2000 when fading menu items were added. Originally, the feature was added in kernel-mode code and was tightly integrated into portions of the UI. Since it worked so well, it ended up staying there. The problem has appeared from time to time, but no one has had a reliable way to reproduce it in the kernel debugger to get it fixed.

The same effect can be achieved without changing the screen resolution or color depth. Go to Start -> Run -> and type tskill dwm. This command will reset the desktop window manager without the need to change the screen resolution.

Changing the screen resolution or color depth also resets the desktop window manager, so it's always been a workaround for the bug when it appears. Either of these solutions will fix the problem.

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  • 3
    I am using Windows 7 Ultimate. This is how I resolved the issue. Go to Control Panel > Change Theme. Set the theme to High Contrast White. The ghosted menu should go away. Set your theme back to what it was.
    – H A
    Jul 11, 2012 at 17:06
  • 1
    I just had a balloon tip's shadow stuck on screen (on top of everything else!). Changing resolutions didn't work for me, but changing color depth did. I switched the depth to 16-bit, then back to 32-bit. That seemed to do the trick.
    – ADTC
    Apr 19, 2013 at 14:08
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    Start - Run - tskill dwm - always fixes it - this really forces DWM to restart. Oct 7, 2013 at 18:44
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    For permanent solution, see next answer.
    – awe
    Jan 2, 2014 at 10:40
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    Had this happen today for the first time ever. After using tskill dwm, it goes away, but has come back with the first menu item I select afterward. Here's hoping it doesn't come back after I reboot. [crosses fingers]
    – Mar
    Jan 30, 2014 at 23:40
192

Last time I saw this was in Windows 2000 where it happened to me occasionally.

I suppose, a workaround would be to disable menu items fading out after clicking in the Performance options:

alt text

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    Took me a trip to Google to see how to get to that screen: - Right Click Computer and select Properties from menu - Choose Advanced System Settings - In the Performance area, click Settings
    – Al Crowley
    Apr 8, 2011 at 11:50
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    @AlCrowley: Or simply type "performance" into the start menu and choose "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows".
    – Joey
    Apr 8, 2011 at 16:42
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    This solution worked for me on Windows 7. Thanks.
    – Ankur
    Apr 10, 2013 at 6:36
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    +1 for the permanent solution (for one machine anyways) Oct 30, 2013 at 7:14
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    Also if you disable the two checkboxes above contextmenus will appear much faster
    – Sven Hecht
    Nov 3, 2013 at 13:33
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In Windows 7 (and probably Vista), using the task manager to kill "dwm.exe" (it restarts automatically) seems a pretty painless way to get rid of the artifact.

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    Unfortunately this is just a very temporary solution at least for me - even if the stuck menu item disappears after killing dwm.exe a new one gets stuck as soon as I click any menu item again.
    – alexteg
    Jan 18, 2011 at 19:36
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    At first, I thought this would work, but unfortunately alexteg is right. I just tried to kill dwm, and indeed the menu item disappeared, but within a minute a new menu item got stuck (and that's hardly a coincidence, since this Windows bug manifests itself rather seldom). At least, with this approach, you can replace the stuck menu item with a new one, the on-screen position of which you can decide for yourself. Sep 17, 2012 at 16:21
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    Thanks, with superuser.com/a/57021/152255 it works fine.
    – onetdev
    May 8, 2013 at 7:53
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    I combined this with @Joey's answer. Joey's answer seems to stop it from occurring, but doesn't clean up the problem on screen at the moment. This clears out the problem on screen at the moment. Running a full screen DirectX game also seems to clear the problem. Aug 15, 2013 at 3:09
  • Even faster, type "tskill dwm" in Run :) Oct 7, 2013 at 18:45
28

Right click Computer, Properties, Advanced System Settings, Advanced Tab, Performance-Settings, Uncheck both:

  • Fade or Slide menus into view and
  • Fade out Menu Items after clicking

Fixed.

2
  • I know this is rather old but I just ran into this problem recently and this is the one that fixed it for me.
    – jefffan24
    Apr 22, 2013 at 13:22
  • worked for me, too bad it reset my theme
    – Daniel
    Nov 15, 2013 at 4:06
11

I think it's faster to just change the colour depth. Once you've changed and clicked Apply, you can just answer NO to the "Do you want to keep these settings?" prompt. It will revert to your original colour depth (with the problem solved). Btw, I recommend you to not change the resolution because doing so will force Windows to recalculate window sizes and positions... twice! It's noticeably slower than changing colour depth.

Anyway this is definitely a video problem in Windows, so the only sure-fire way (other than restarting) would be to force Windows to fully refresh the video buffer. You can do that by killing dwm.exe, but changing colour depth is faster (no need to search long list of processes), safer (no need to risk your Windows' stability) and easier to grasp for novices.

Adding to this: The important thing may be to say "NO" when prompted to "keep the settings". If you say yes, then the orphan menu pieces may return.

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Enough tskill dwm commands seems to stop dwm re-starting, so you may need to restart the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager in Services:

enter image description here

6

I recently started getting this problem on a Windows 7 Professional Thinkpad W510 and a generic i7 workstation running Windows 7 Ultimate. Having it happen to both machines was a source of interest and typing 'tskill dwm' would do things like break screenshot and felt like a bad work around.

In my case I have found the problem was the Logitech SetPoint process crashing. Disabling the on screen notification modifications it makes to the system seems to have solved the tooltip problem.

Hopefully the core idea here helps someone:- Some tool that manipulates the Aero overlay may be interfering.

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  • I have SetPoint also, seems to interfere with Aero, thanks!
    – Hernán
    Mar 16, 2015 at 14:34
0

I used to get this quite a lot on my home system, running XPPro, along with tool-tip boxes doing the same. Windows Explorer was the app that exposed the oddity most (though that might be because it is on of the utilities most commonly used). Closing/killing applications, as in your case, did nothing but flipping screen resolutions or colour depths did. Also switching to the login screen then logging back in would usually, but not always, do the trick.

I happens very rarely now, though I'm not sure what has changed to reduce the occurrence. I have recently upgraded the graphics card in the machine, but the reduction in occurrence happened noticably before that upgrade took place. My guess is that either a driver update or one of MS's patches has reduced the problem, but that is only a guess. In any case, make sure that you have not missed any updates and make sure you are running the latest stable drivers for your graphics chipset.

0

The "Rotate to normal" hotkey CTRL + ALT + UpArrow can be used to clear the stuck menu, if your graphics card driver supports it.

(I know for a fact this works with Intel graphics, but can't vouch for any others.)

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  • Doesn't work for me. Jan 13, 2014 at 0:47
  • @AndreasRejbrand I have updated my answer to be more specific
    – benrwb
    Jan 13, 2014 at 13:46
  • @benrwd: OK, I see, it's a feature of some video graphics drivers. Well, it certainly is a shortcut for those with this hotkey. (But I suppose the fix is only temporary -- the next time you click a native Win32 popup menu item, it will stick again?) Jan 13, 2014 at 14:11
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    @AndreasRejbrand Yes it is only a temporary fix, the best solution is to disable the "Fade out Menu Items after clicking" setting as detailed in other answers.
    – benrwb
    Jan 15, 2014 at 7:57
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    This is a default hotkey on Intel integrated graphics drivers, although it's often disabled because people hit it accidentally and then don't know how to change it back. Feb 5, 2014 at 19:31
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You can use the taskkill command:

  1. Open Command Prompt
  2. Type taskkill /im dwm.exe and then press Enter.

"taskkill" Command

If it happens regularly, you can also save the command in a batch file.

0

If you're using Windows 10, you may be unable to kill dwm.exe without being forced to shutdown/restart Windows as I was.

To prevent this issue in the future, I followed this answer, but to fix the problem I had at the moment, I just changed my resolution, then reverted back to my original resolution, which erased the menu item which had been stuck on the screen.

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  • I'm using Windows 10 17134, and killing dwm.exe works. However the ghost will just come back soon for a new menu item...
    – FrankHB
    Feb 5, 2020 at 13:04

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