What is this window switcher (screenshot) running on Windows Vista and how do I disable it?
2014-07
Bryce Thomas
I'm diagnosing a problem on a friend's Windows Vista machine. Basically it has this intermittent issue where without any user input, it seems to activate some kind of window switcher/tiler program which zooms out all the windows. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:
It's possible this is just the Windows Vista switcher (I don't use Vista myself) and I'm just not recognizing it. Whether it's a built in thing or some add-on, it's quite frustrating that it seems to activate all on its own. There doesn't seem to be any icons in the toolbar and I've tried digging through the start menu and can't find what program it is. I've also done a Google Image search and can't seem to identify a program that looks just like this (grey bar/white text across the middle of each window), so I'm stuck.
Does anyone know what program this is and how to disable it?
Marc-Andre R.
I got a weird situation with my Windows Vista X64 that doesn't always happen.
Sometime, when I'm booting, it freeze on the splash where the line's going right to left, the only thing that work is this crazy line. Nothing load, HardDrive doesn't load anything. If I do reset, it could work, but It might not and just do it all over again the same freaking loading splash.
Trying to boot to safe mode in these situation show me that windows looks to hang on crcdisk.sys file.
I've made many research on the web, many people looks to have this problem, not hardware related, but it seems that there's no magic solution to it except formatting but I want to avoid it, I can't spend days to reinstall all my stuff, I need my PC to work on many projects.
My PC worked just great the last 6 months, until this problem came out of no where two weeks ago. I didn't made any change on my machine either Software of Hardware since at least a month so It is not something I installed that cause this problem.
My windows is also fully up-to-date.
Thanks to everyone who'll try to help me.
Moab
If you don't want to pay for spinrite you could try using chkdsk. Open a command window and at the prompt type: CHKDSK /R and press enter. It will probably ask to schedule a check at the next boot, (because the drive is in use), so press Y to agree.
If Windows will not load you will have to get a command prompt by booting from a regular Vista or Windows 7 Install disk
After chkdsk is done and it will still not load Windows, run a System File checker offline
There could also be an infection in Windows causing this, scan for infections using an AV boot CD or usb key.
Stephen
Spinrite might be able to help you out. Expensive but a brilliant tool to have.
Marc-Andre R.
Finaly vista just died by itself, I've just reinstall it and all is good up to now.
I flushed my raid array to be able to test individuals disk with WD tools and all is good, nothing wrong. So I rebuild the array and reinstall windows.