A Stuck image of a tool tip that will not close, is there another option other than a reboot

Thank you very much for the thoughtful follow-up. The whole thing is really juicy information, particularly identifying that the windows failing are those from LibreOffice Writer. It's really kind of intuitive: Tooltip appears practically far from the actual owner window. So you have confirmed that LibreOffice is the window that caused it. With that, here are a few proactive things you can do or set up now to help minimize or more quickly deal with this in the future:

1. Disable Tooltip Help in LibreOffice

Stick tooltips or "Extended Tips" could sometimes pop up in LibreOffice and go crazy.

Turn them off:

Open up LibreOffice Writer

Go to Tools → Options

Go to LibreOffice → General

Uncheck:

"Tips"

"Extended tips"

Click OK and restart the app.

2. Update Rendering Backend or Switch

Rendering options help in LibreOffice to affect UI behavior

Go to Tools → Options > Now,

Expand LibreOffice →View

Under Graphics Output you should check/uncheck:

"Use Skia for all rendering"

Try checking/unchecking "Force Skia software rendering"

You may need to restart LibreOffice after changing that.

3. Kill LibreOffice UI through Task Manager in Case of Stuck Again

If you can't identify the possible app next time and have a hunch it's LibreOffice:

Open Task Manager

Find LibreOffice (soffice.bin) or soffice.exe

End just that process

Your other work stays intact and the tooltip should vanish.

"Windows forum Moving to Microsoft Q&A" - Displays of beautiful taxonomies and classifications frame the Q&A conversations, but, from Microsoft's point of view, these forums draw on a ton of support and technical discussions that could really use a more modern, attractiveness-focused destination.

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Why the move to Microsoft Q&A?

*Unified Platform: Microsoft Q&A forms a part of a general endeavor to unify support and technical discussions across Microsoft products- particularly targeting IT pros, developers, and enterprise users.

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Help others in the Community by giving back. If this solution resolved your problem, please mark the answer provided.

Best regards,

Tin

I appreciate the reply, and thank you for the tips. Either of them worked, sadly, and I did not know which application was the cause, SO, I started saving my progress in the open windows I had open, OBS, graphics, notepad, apps, the last application I closed was LibreOffice Writer, and that was holding the tooltip there. I did not expect that application, because I have the writer off to the right, and that tool tip was in the center of the display. Either way, it is closed, and now I have some options to try thanks to you.

Have a good day

Sam I am.

PS: Any idea why this is moving to the Q&A section?

"Windows forum Moving to Microsoft Q&A"

Hello! Thank you for reaching out. I am Tin, an independent advisor, and glad to assist you today with this issue. This is a very well-known and frustrating issue in Windows 11-and sometimes in Windows 10-when tooltips or pop-up UI elements remain stuck on the screen, especially after closing the parent app or window. Such stuck elements are part of the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) or the app process that created the tooltip.

Doing so allows you to avoid rebooting the entire system. You should try the one or more of the following tricks that will let you avoid a restart:

Option 1: Restart Windows Explorer

This should refresh the desktop and clear almost all stuck UI elements.

Steps:

Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.

Go to the Processes tab and scroll down to Windows Explorer.

Right-click and select Restart.

This will cause your taskbar and desktop to flash briefly but will not close any applications that are open.

Option 2: Use Taskkill to close responsible process If you know which application was likely responsible for that tooltip (For example: File Explorer, Outlook, Teams, etc.), then kill that application without rebooting but terminate the process.

Steps:

Press Win + X → select Windows Terminal (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin).

Execute:

bash Copy Edit taskkill /f /im explorer.exe start explorer.exe

Or target it like one specific app for example:

bash Copy Edit taskkill /f /im yourapp.exe Replace yourapp.exe with the one possibly generating the tooltip (for example: outlook.exe, teams.exe, and so on).

Option 3: DWM Reset (Advanced, Rarely Needed) You can restart the Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe), but, of course, this is a bit risky because it may cause some display glitches.

Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc).

Go to the Details tab.

Right-click dwm.exe → choose End task.

Windows will restart it automatically.

Note: The above can send the screen flickering and artifacting for a while.

Option 4: Use Accessibility Shortcuts to Refresh UI Sometimes hitting Win + Ctrl + Shift + B (used to reset graphics driver) will blink the screen and dispel ghost UI elements.

Optional: Use a Script or Shortcut for Quick Tooltip Fix You can create a shortcut to quickly restart Explorer:

Right-click desktop → New → Shortcut

Use: bash Copy Edit cmd.exe /c taskkill /f /im explorer.exe && start explorer.exe

Name it Restart Explorer Run it each time you have the problem.

Please try these steps and let me know how it goes. If you run into any issues, just reply back with the details.

Best regards,

Tin