Black desktop/wallpaper disappears

[AGlobalThreatsK]

Mine just turned black too. I enabled the background shuffle and was enjoying watching my pictures. Then I went in and deselected a couple of them, and then I decided I wanted to remove the "shuffle" option so they would scroll in order. About 10 pictures later the desktop turned to black. When I went back in the wallpaper options it had 1 picture selected and the slide show was disabled. I opened a picture and clicked "set as wallpaper" but nothing happened. I went back in the background options, closed it, and the wallpaper i selected appeared all of a sudden. Next thing I know it scrolls past the wallpaper I selected and went through a couple more pictures and now it's back to plain black again...

The only thing I have running is windows media player.. no activation hacks here either.

I got the background to come back... it seems that (For me at least) the background will only turn to black if "Shuffle" is NOT enabled. As soon as I turned shuffle back on, the backgrounds came back and are scrolling through just fine.

 

[squall325]

its a bug of the beta version... hopefully it'll be fixed soon... but i got a fix so far by using the vista drivers... try vista drivers.. so far its been good..

 

[AGlobalThreatsK]

Using the vista drivers for what? The graphics card?

No matter what settings I put, the background will eventually go to black if slide-show is enabled.

 

[squall325]

yeah i used the vista64 drivers for nvidia cards on win7... fixed my blackscreen and artifact problems..

 

[AGlobalThreatsK]

Didn't work for me, just changed over to Vista 64 drivers that were released TODAY by Nvidia. After putting the background on slide-show it didn't even take 5 minutes and it's back a black background.

 

[cbstatix]

Change Graphics Resolution

I was messing around trying to solve the Black desktop problem and discovered that if I simply switch resolutions, it fixes the problem [until I reboot that is.] So far, the only solution I know of is to change resolutions each time one logs on.

 

[baarod]

I was messing around trying to solve the Black desktop problem and discovered that if I simply switch resolutions, it fixes the problem [until I reboot that is.] So far, the only solution I know of is to change resolutions each time one logs on.

A suspend cycle works too. Just set your BIOS to use STR (suspend to RAM) for ACPI suspend mode. When your video acts up just put the system to sleep and wake it back up. In STR mode that completely resets the video adapter -- just like turning the computer off and back on again.

Also, can anyone confirm if this is happening to those folks using WDDM 1.1 drivers as opposed to XPDM or WDDM 1.0? Especially with high resolutions these background images take a lot of vram that has to be mapped into the DWM address space. WDDM 1.1 is supposed to handle that kind of thing better.

 

[Chappy]

There are a couple of reports of the Black screen issue on the Windows Ecosystem Feedback reports. I was just going thru them a few minutes ago and saw about 3 or 4 reports of this same thing so it is probably just a beta glitch.

 

[linuzo]

Yeah, I have been experiencing the same thing as well. It is usually just when going from a full screen application like a game or something that requires a lot of ram. As stated by others above the best way is to change your screen resolution to force the video driver to reload. I'm sure there is just some information being lost when switching applications back to explorer or something like that.

 

[renthor]

I've found that by right-clicking on the problem game's .exe going to properties...compatibility mode, and then selecting "Disable desktop composition" I can pretty much never run into the problem again. So far I have not had to enable backwards-compatibility of any kind (e.g. run in vista mode or earlier, just the desktop composition).

 

[ittech]

not sure what causes that but have seen the same symptom once or twice, you can reload the desktop wallpaper, or it seems to appear without any corrective action on the next boot. legit minor bug i think.

 

[Mark]

This only seems to happen if you are using images that have symbols and non letters in the name, according to another member with the same problem. I have had this happen but only when quitting a game, because I have slideshow on I just right click the desktop and click on next desktop background picture.

 

[AGlobalThreatsK]

This only seems to happen if you are using images that have symbols and non letters in the name, according to another member with the same problem. I have had this happen but only when quitting a game, because I have slideshow on I just right click the desktop and click on next desktop background picture.

Nope. It fixed it at first but eventually it would stop on pictures even with simple letters and numbers in the name. It kept stopping on one that was like "Dave20.jpg" or something really simple like that.

Next desktop background picture doesn't always work for me. If it stopped, and I click that, nothing happens. Then I go back to the same menu, and "Next Desktop Background Picture" is gone from the menu, and my desktop is set to a solid black color.

http://www.sevenforums.com/customization/2877-background-changer-issue.html

 

[ainkyboy]

Happens on Vista too

This is not only a windows 7 issue, the exact same thing happens to me on Vista, and now that you mentioned it, I had just played World of Warcraft before it happened.

 

[ceemeister]

Never happened here with Vista.

Happens to me all the time in Windows 7 and I'm not running any games or full-screen software. Minor annoyance really but no cause or fix in sight. Perhaps ATI will finally release a proper Windows 7 driver that does the trick. I haven't tried the Catalyst drivers available for Windows Vista, because I'm leery of using anything but native Windows 7 drivers right now.

I think perhaps there is an issue with the RealVNC software I'm running. One thing that always kills the desktop is connecting to another computer via RealVNC. The mirror driver is likely the culprit.

 

[AGlobalThreatsK]

Never happened here with Vista.

Happens to me all the time in Windows 7 and I'm not running any games or full-screen software. Minor annoyance really but no cause or fix in sight. Perhaps ATI will finally release a proper Windows 7 driver that does the trick. I haven't tried the Catalyst drivers available for Windows Vista, because I'm leery of using anything but native Windows 7 drivers right now.

I think perhaps there is an issue with the RealVNC software I'm running. One thing that always kills the desktop is connecting to another computer via RealVNC. The mirror driver is likely the culprit.

I switched out my vid card at work to an ATI X1300 Pro and installed the Vista 64 drivers and have experienced 0 problems. U shouldn't be scared of the drivers, you can always boot into safe mode and roll them back if there's a problem.

 

[unclesoup]

I think this is the same problem I have had.
Blank deskop upon startup and an empty tool bar. My guess is that Desktop Window Manager is not getting along with the graphics driver and something is failing to startup.
A quick fix for me is to open the Taskmanager. Locate dwm.exe .... and end process JUST ONCE.
If you stop it once it seems to reload itself and everyone seems happy, problem kinda fixed.
IF YOU END PROCESS 2x it seems to screw up windows 7 somethin awful. I'm still in counseling.. ? jk
Hopes this helps cuz I was sick of restarting windows 3x to fix the glitch

 

[Majestic]

I had the same problem, desktop turning black, especially after closing games.
By coïncidence I found a solution: Refreshing the windows experience index!
go to: Control panel - System and security - System - Check the windows experience index - and then click refresh or re-run the assesment, depending on how often you've updated this page.
It might not be the fastest solution, but it beats rebooting every time, plus you can just minimalize and keep all your active programs.
Hope it works for you too.

 

[yadielfeliciano]

Hmm

I heard that if you don't activate your copy of windows you will get a black wallpaper

 

[AGlobalThreatsK]

Yes if your copy of windows is not genuine it will switch to a solid black background on startup and every hour (iirc). That is completely seperate, that is how it is supposed to work and it is not a problem. That should not be confused with the other solid black background problems/bugs in this thread.