Forum Discussion
Flashing Screen & Taskbar has disappeared
I couldn't understand what was causing it, i thought at first it might be related to the battery as it started when it wasn't plugged in and seemed to stop after being plugged in.
But in the last few 2 weeks or so, plugging it in no longer stops the flashing from happening, however the flashing had been intermittent, it would sometimes not happen at all (when booting up and staying in the same place), other times it would start, stop then start again. Often this would be when i disconnected the power-supply then re-connected it (when moving between rooms). What i had been doing was running SFC /SCANNOW every few weeks which would (sometimes) find an error and fix it (which would in-turn stop the flashing), only for it to return a day or 2 later. However this got progressively worse a few days ago when the flashing was continuous irrelevant of what i did, SFC /SCANNOW would come back clear as would DISM, keeping the laptop on the power-supply from start up and not moving rooms made no difference. So i ran a chkdsk (/f /r /x) just to see if it wasn't a faulty sector, this required me to restart the laptop (which i did overnight), when i came back the next morning, the laptop had booted back into Windows but the taskbar was now not appearing and the screen was still flashing. Which obviously concerned me far more. I had a look in the Event Viewer and noticed it said that there were 2 entries for 'Bad Sectors'. I initially ran SFC /SCANNOW again and it ran successfully and returned the taskbar (but the flashing remained), however when i turned it off that night and turned it back on the next morning the taskbar was once again gone, as of this morning running SFC /SCANNOW failed twice at 16% exactly. I've run chkdsk again after and it's completed, gone back into windows (i didn't see it finish) but once again without the taskbar and still flashing.
2 Replies
- AxtoniuIron Contributor
You can try updating your graphics card drivers and then restarting Windows Explorer.
- FlynnArcherIron Contributor
If errors persist, and especially with bad sectors and system instability, a clean reinstall might be the best option. Format the drive during installation to ensure all bad sectors are wiped out (though this risks data loss, so backup first).