Tooltip Shadow

Greetings!

A couple of weeks ago a strange anomaly started on my desktop. A "ghost" of the drop shadow of some of the tool tips from my system tray appear dead center in the middle of my main screen. It only happens for about half of the icons in the system tray, and for none of the icons that appear in my other tool bars.

It doesn't seems to be causing any real problems, other than being a minor annoyance, but it does make me wonder if there is a more serious underlying issue.

I'm running Windows XP SP3. I've ran spyware and virus checkers, and I've updated my video drivers and the software causing these "ghosts" to appear.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Brian

P.S. I just notice when I hovered over the "Login" button for this site in Firefox the tooltip that came up als cast the ghost.

http://www3.telus.net/becragg//screenshot/Tool_Tip_Shadow.jpg

 

Hi aspirin,

Are you using a skinner or desktop themer? Maybe steps should be explored that will return your desktop theme, monitor (resolution and refresh rate) and a reduction of xp's built in eye candy effects to within more normal defaulted modes. This we can not do for you since it is user/os/hardware specific and often requires trial and error experimentation until you find your own systems comfort zone.

As Arie pointed out, the effect you are experiencing is graphic related. Anything involved in the display of such should be considered.

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Perhaps you can try reducing your graphic bells and whistle by adjusting your settings for better performance. This can be done by:
>right clicking on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop.
>select "Properties ".
>Select the "advanced" tab.
>Select the "Performance " "settings button ".
>Select the "Visual Effects" tab.
>Put a tick in the "Custom" circle.
>uncheck all unneeded effects, with the possible exceptions "smooth edges of screen fonts" and the last two or three if you are using a common task option. This is the way I have mine set and it works quite well for me. You may wish to adjust the "bells and whistles" to your liking. Anything done in there can be undone just as easily.

 

Thanks for the info.

Funny thing. My computer had 5 hard drives, so I have PerfectDisk set to defrag all of them every Sunday night. When I went to my den on Monday morning my machine had frozen. I forced a reboot and the shadow problem was gone. However, once I started working, windows were opening in strange paces (I have two monitors) and I couldn't get them to open where I wanted them, or where they normally would.

Until your help, updating video drivers never crossed my mind (duh! It's the first thing I do with any other hardware). The drivers I have for my NVidea GeForce 6800 were the ones that came in the box when I bought the card about a year ago (ver. 78). I went to the driver site and found the current version is 176. Wow! I DLd and installed. All problems fixed!

Thanks again for the help. It was a small problem, but VERY annoying

Brian

 

Thanks goes to Arie, I just tried to expand on the topic a wee bit and offer a suggestion for a little more optimized graphics relief. I find that the settings suggested significantly speed up the display.

I would like to send a "thank you" back at ya' for being kind enough to share your final outcome and your most welcome.