Windows 10: Black/white horizontal bar across the screen in Adobe and Chrome

Hello all,


Myself and the rest of our IT department have been struggling with this for almost 8 months now.


The issue: Every day, in Adobe (Acrobat and Reader) and Google Chrome, one of our users is experiencing a bar that stretches across the entire screen. This bar varies in height, as well as color. Sometimes its white, sometimes its black (image 1). Sometimes, it is even a frozen image of an earlier window at that position (image 2). When clicking in this bar, the window disappears and the window behind it is active. I have attached screenshots of the issues








This issue is user specific. The image used to build the computer is the same as everyone else in the department, and no software on this machine is unique to only her. All of this software is updated to the same versions as the other users as well. This user is not affected by any unique Group Policies.

OS: Started out as Windows 10 x64 Version 1709 and upgraded to Windows 10 x64 Version 1809


The hardware: The user first started noticing the issue when she had a HP Elitebook 850 G4 and was using an external monitor as her main display (Display Port). The external monitor was situated to the left of her laptop display. This model is used throughout the company. During troubleshooting, we moved her M2 drive to another unit of the same model. We also tried rebuilding her M2 drive from that image and from scratch. Last week, we built a HP ProDesk 600 G2 and set her up on that. With this PC, we set up a second monitor on the right(Display Port). Therefore, the issue is not related to hardware.


The issue seems to only occur on the "main" monitor. Yesterday, we noticed that the issue was only happening on her left monitor, which was set up as her main monitor. For testing, we set up the right monitor as the main monitor, and the issue followed it.


Currently, the only workaround that we have been able to find is pressing F11 twice in Chrome, bringing it to full screen and back. I think she is doing something similar in Adobe. This workaround is extremely temporary. I believe we also tried refreshing the display adapter, but that isn't very helpful.


The user has tried paying attention to what she is doing when the issue occurs. From the information she has given us, there doesn't seem to be many similarities from day to day. One day she reported that the issue pops up after she opened a voicemail from an email attachment, but the next day when she opened a similar attachment, everything worked fine.


The one thing we can think of that she does differently from any other employee is open emails with PDF attachments from Indeed.com. However, she has not noticed the issue happening every time she opens one of these emails and attachments each morning.


This issue is not reflecting at all in the Event Viewer.


Things we have tried:

• Updated display and graphics drivers. At first, this seemed to fix the issue, but it came back a day or two later.
• Updated all other hardware drivers
• Disabled Hardware Acceleration
• Changed resolution, refresh rate, and scaling
• Rearranged the monitors into different configurations, setting different monitors as main display
• Replaced the monitors entirely
• Swapped Display Port cables with VGA cables
• Updated OS to 1809
• Rolled back drivers to earlier versions (per other forums)
• Updated all software
• Deleted user profile from computer and reconfigured it
• Moved M.2 drive to another computer, same model
• Completely wiped her M.2 and rebuilt from image
• Completely wiped her M.2 and rebuilt from scratch
• Built new computer with different drive and hardware

At this point, we are at a loss on what to do next. As you can see, we have tried very extreme troubleshooting steps, but nothing has helped.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks in advanced!

Kaleb Ward

:)

 

Black or White bars at top or bottom of screen

I have already posted in the Google Calendar forums and they have said it isn't an issue with Google Calendar.

And yes, I have disabled all extensions, cleared cache, and used 3 other browsers all with same symptoms.

To clarify the problem. Basically a white or black bar will suddenly appear in the top or bottom of the browser which then imposes itself onto other tabs and windows. The first example was taken in Google Maps, but you can see the Google Calendar tab/white
bar cutting off the bottom of the screen.

The second example is taken in Adobe Reader, but you can see that Firefox black bar has imposed itself in both left and right section of the screen and parts of the Adobe application are not visible.

 

Small white bar on right side of screen

Hi Bardan,





We'd be glad to provide assistance. To better narrow this down and deliver you accurate solutions, please answer
the following questions:

• 
  Is the white bar present regardless of what program you are using on your computer?
  
• 
  Can you send us a screenshot of the
  white bar?
  Please edit the image if any personal information may be exposed.
  
• 
  What troubleshooting steps have you tried so far?
  

This issue could also be related to
damaged screen. We suggest that you contact your manufacturer to have your computer checked for hardware issues.



Regards.

 

Black bar in chrome

As far as I can tell Windows 10 does not have a separate Tablet Mode Chrome Browser, although I remember something like that in Windows 8.

I have seen other people post similar things on this forum. For example, one person describes a black task bar that covers their normal chrome task bar. This is not my issue, my black bar is below the task bar and bookmarks bar. That thread is located
here: Google Chrome Black Task Bar is hiding my windows 8 taskbar

Another person describes a black bar that appears when they move the cursor close to the top of the page, this bar also covers the chrome task bar. This is evidently a result of using a mouse in "modern mode" which is designed to be touch-based. This is
also different from my issue as the black bar on my screen is permanent and in a fixed position. That thread can be found here: Black bar that appears when cursor is moved to the top of the screen

Both of the above threads involve users of Windows 8.