T-Clock mostly obscured by black rectangle

[Hrafn]

Since moving to Win10, T-Clock has been intermittently been partially (but mostly) obscured by a black rectangle in the bottom right of the screen. The first digit of the time and the first 2.5 characters of the day-of-the-week are visible to the left of this rectangle. The problem occurs at startup, can generally be fixed by rebooting, but eventually reoccurs (after further reboots).

Oddly enough, on attempting a screen-grab of the problem, the rectangle appears as transparent/'blank' (at least in the editor), rather than black:
T-Clock mostly obscured by black rectangle

T-Clock version is "T-Clock Redux x64 - 2.4.4 build 492"

[IainB]

@Hrafn:
That's odd. I never had any problem with T-Clock (Win10-64 Pro or earlier). It starts at windows startup, automatically.
I am using T-Clock v2.4.4.492 also.

As to the black rectangle, I have no idea.
I sometimes find that other proggies can leave residual artefacts like that, when they have had some kind of non-terminal error (e.g., FARR occasionally does it). Terminating and restarting them usually fixes it.
Could it be the residue of a "toaster" notification box?

When I have problems with Notifcation icons not appearing (or not properly) in the Systray, I usually find that terminating/restarting explorer.exe can clear it. It might help with the T-Clock window also.
There's an explorer.exe restarter utility from Windows Club I use for that, but there's one (or used to be) from NirSoft also.

Where you wrote that "The problem occurs at startup", I wasn't sure whether you meant startup of Windows or of T-Clock.
Does simply terminating/restarting T-Clock not help?

[WhiteTigX]

[...]
There's an explorer.exe restarter utility from Windows Club I use for that, but there's one (or used to be) from NirSoft also.
[...]

-IainB (December 02, 2018, 12:45 AM)

T-Clock can do that too If you Ctrl+Right-Click it. Though it can be pretty slow as explorer sometimes hates to quit properly...

Anyway, @Hrafn
When did you move to Windows 10?
What did you use to capture the "screenshot"?
T-Clock seems to be correctly positioned, but there's this "black" rectangle, correct? The "Notifications" button is visible right next to it?
Also, what happens when you click on either the "black" rectangle or the visible part of T-Clock?
How does the mouse-over look, will it also clip where the rectangle is?


Ever tried to Right-Click T-Clock and use "Refresh T-Clock"?
Restarting T-Clock or the Explorer (eg. through the way mentioned above) should "fix" it without requiring to reboot.

[Hrafn]

Sorry for the delay, I had to wait for the anomaly to reoccur (some days it does, some days it doesn't).

@WhiteTigX:
September this year.
<Print screen> key, then paint.net
Correct. I believe I hid or turned off the 'Notifications' button soon after I installed Windows 10 (it was just notifying me of inane trivia). The button immediately to the left of T-Clock is the Network button.
Mouseover gives the full date, same for both obscured and unobscured part.
"Refresh T-Clock" makes no difference.
Restarting T-Clock makes no difference. Restarting Explorer with explorestart.exe makes no difference.

@IainB:
I think the Notifications & restarting bits are covered above.
I start T-Clock with Windows (there's just a few seconds of the default Windows clock), and the problem appears to occur immediately on T-Clock loading.

[WhiteTigX]

Thanks for replying. I actually begin to remember seeing something like that too...
Though I suspect it has to do with the hidden notifications button. Will hide it on my end for now, so I might or might not experience the same soon

[Hrafn]

Hmmm. It seems that explorestart.exe doesn't actually restart explorer (at least on my computer). I had to restart it due to an unrelated anomaly, tried explorestart.exe which again did nothing, so tried the instructions for that anomaly, which was to restart it through Task Manager. This solved the new problem, the icons on the taskbar disappeared and the opened instance of Explorer on the taskbar closed (unlike with explorestart.exe which did none of this).

I'll try restarting Explorer from Task Manager next time I experience the anomaly, to see if this will help.

[WhiteTigX]

It's weird that the NirSoft program doesn't work they're pretty good usually. (even though "basic")
When I've talked about restarting the explorer, I've meant the T-Clock way Why not use it when it's there?
@Hrafn could you try T-Clock's method to see if that is able to restart explorer?

Once again, it works like this: hold down "Ctrl" and Right-Click T-Clock to open the "extended" menu, at the bottom (below "Exit T-Clock") you should see some extended functionality and "Restart Explorer" (if your Ctrl key is broken, you may use Shift instead.. or use both)

[IainB]

@WhiteTigX:

...try T-Clock's method to see if that is able to restart explorer...

-WhiteTigX (December 06, 2018, 12:54 PM)

Quite nifty. Thanks. I had never realised that feature was there until you mentioned it earlier in this thread. Anyway, I tried it and it seems to work just fine. I shall use it in future, but shall retain RestartExplorer to use for those times when the Start Menu is playing up and one cannot select anything in or below the Systray (this is when the Start Menu is vertical on the LHS).

[WhiteTigX]

@WhiteTigX:

...try T-Clock's method to see if that is able to restart explorer...

-WhiteTigX (December 06, 2018, 12:54 PM)

Quite nifty. Thanks. I had never realised that feature was there until you mentioned it earlier in this thread. Anyway, I tried it and it seems to work just fine. I shall use it in future, but shall retain RestartExplorer to use for those times when the Start Menu is playing up and one cannot select anything in or below the Systray (this is when the Start Menu is vertical on the LHS).

-IainB (December 06, 2018, 10:57 PM)

Well... actually you can call this T-Clock function via command line as well Should be documented within the `T-Clock Help.rtf`
Though yeah, IIRC it requires T-Clock to hook the tray first, so it might not work if the explorer freezes or something like that.

[Curt]

Hmmm. It seems that explorestart.exe doesn't actually restart explorer (at least on my computer).

-Hrafn (December 06, 2018, 07:05 AM)

You can use this tool [Explorestart] in the following operating systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

-2004 Nir Sofer

[Hrafn]

The anomaly reoccurred. Because I was paying closer attention to it, I discovered that the black rectangle actually appears before T-Clock does, meaning it is probably some screwup in Win10 and/or its built-in clock rather than T-Clock itself.

Also restarting Explorer does not help.