Menu select item stuck on screen after context or command menu has closed

Question

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.

(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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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:

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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.)

Answer 11

You can use the taskkill command:

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

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