Taskbar will not go away when playing games in Windowed(Fullscreen)

Hi Reset751,

I'm Christine, a Windows user like you. I'll do my best to help you. I can see here that your task bar won't hide even you're playing games on your computer.

May I know when did the issue start? Is there any changes made?

Which version of Windows are you using? (Please press Windows key+R and type winver and hit enter)

Please try to follow the steps below:

Refresh the explorer.exe for taskbar

On Windows 11:

Right click on start menu and choose Task Manager

Click Details Tab and end the task of explorer.exe

Then click Run New Task and type explorer.exe and hit enter

On Windows 10

Right click on start menu and choose Task Manager

Click Details Tab and end the task of explorer.exe

Hit File then click Run new Task and type explorer.exe and press enter

After that, please check if the issue still persists.

Please let me know the result. I'll be happy to assist you all the way until it's resolved.

Thank you,

Christine L

Independent Advisor

I am running Windows 11. Killing explorer.exe does not solve the problem. The taskbar reloads as soon as I reopen explorer. I have made 0 changes to any setting. The only thing I did was add 2 additional monitors to my computer. Previously I was using 1 27" 4K 144HZ monitor. This issue start the very first time I attempted to play a game after getting the monitors working.

This is becoming particularly frustrating because if I alt tab too much, all of my screens turn off and I'm forced to hard shut down the computer to get my displays to work again. It's not limited to just the displays either. I am running a set of external speakers and my sound will immediately cut out when the monitors die.

I am also actively monitoring the cpu, motherboard, and gpu in case it was causing unexpected spikes in usage or temperature. All are remaining with accepted tolerances, so the displays are not shutting down due to overheating.

Hi Reset751,

Thank you so much for the update. Appreciated.

Please try to follow the steps below:

1. Kindly check if the display scale was set to recommended setup.

To check please click Start menu and type scale then hit enter.

Scroll down and please check the Scale option.

Restart and check if the issue still persists.

2. Let's Run Hardware troubleshooter

Please press Windows key + R

Paste the command below to the Run box and press Enter:

msdt.exe -id DeviceDiagnostic

Please restart and check if the issue still persists.

3. Update Windows

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/upd...

Please let me know how it goes. I'm just here.

Thank you,

Christine

I apologize that the fix does not solve the issue. Let's check more options from other experts. Please wait for them to reply here.

Thanks,

Christine

Independent Advisor

I did have Nvidia control panel overriding the scaling. Regular scaling settings have never been adjusted and are set to recommend, only those through Nvidia were changed. So, I turned those off and now the game has a thick black border all the way around when in Fullscreen AND still shows the taskbar in windowed (Fullscreen).

In addition, there is now a very thin strip around the outside while in windowed mode where I can interact with my desktop. I can see the very edge of the icons. EDIT: On second glance, this was occuring previously as well during windowed(fullscreen), I just didn't notice it until now.

I ran the troubleshooter, and it said it detected an issue and I needed to restart to fix. I restarted and still experiencing the problem.

I just finished installing the latest update: 023-04 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5025305) and restarted my computer.

Issue is still occurring. Using windowed (not Fullscreen) and the maximizing the window does properly keep the taskbar below the game window, but it does not extend across the entire screen. There are strips on the left and right side exposing the desktop.

I had to change my settings in nvidia control panel from no scaling back to fullscreen to get the black border to go away while in fullscreen. All 4 options I have(Aspect ratio, fullscreen, no scaling, integer scaling) all produce the same result in windowed(fullscreen). The taskbar is visible and on top of the game client in all for modes regardless of whether I select "Override the scaling mode set by games and programs".