White lines on Windows 8.1 start screen?

cerebralhigh · 22 Apr 2014 at 20:43

I've recently installed the latest version of Windows 8.1 and everything seems fine apart from randomly appearing dotted white lines on my start screen. I'm not sure if they're supposed to be there as part of the design, or whether it's an error of some sort. Here's a screenshot:

The lines are straight and form partial rectangles as you can see. They don't appear every time I view my start menu and when they do, they don't always look the same.

Any ideas? Or is this how it's supposed to look?

thel33ter · 22 Apr 2014 at 21:46

Do they move as you scroll? And have you tried changing themes?

cerebralhigh · 22 Apr 2014 at 22:14

Hi there, thanks for your reply.

No they don't move when I scroll using the mouse wheel, but when I click the 'down' arrow at the bottom left corner of the screen and move to the apps view, only the lower section of the white lines are visible. So in other words the screen moves down revealing my apps and leaving only the lower section of the white lines visible.

I haven't tried changing themes, I'll do that and see what happens.

cerebralhigh · 22 Apr 2014 at 22:20

Ok when I change the background on the start page, the other backgrounds don't have the same problem. In fact when I changed the background and then changed it back, the problem was reduced (although the a few of the lines could still be seen very faintly).

yashiro · 23 Apr 2014 at 03:33

A dodgy old video driver perhaps; or maybe a side effect of some forced AA settings in the driver control panel.

thel33ter · 23 Apr 2014 at 06:12

Could even be that that background file is a tiny bit corrupt or something, I'd say just use another one

cerebralhigh · 23 Apr 2014 at 07:26

Hi yashiro, thanks for your input. It's not the video driver as I only recently built the system and updated the driver via the nvidia website. That was the first thing I checked. Also the graphics card appears to be working.

thel33ter, it does look like it could just be that background file; the others all seem fine at the moment. If that is the problem then it's probably not worth reinstalling windows, although I suppose that is an option.

cerebralhigh · 23 Apr 2014 at 07:29

yashiro, could you please explain what 'AA settings' are? I'm not a gamer so I'm not very au fait with graphics cards; my kids are the ones who play the games

If you think it might have something to do with the settings I can have a look in the Geforce Experience app? Is that what you mean by 'driver control panel'? Or I could try reinstalling the driver?

yashiro · 24 Apr 2014 at 00:06

Search for and open 'Nvidia Control Panel' on your computer.

Click Manage 3D Settings. Make sure Global Settings is the highlighted tab. Then click Restore Defaults in the top right of the container window. This will reset stuff back to defaults.

There was definitely a similar issue with log in screens when Windows 8 was released but it was primarily seen on AMD cards. It was an out of date driver issue. If everything else works fine I wouldn't worry about it.

cerebralhigh · 24 Apr 2014 at 14:27

Thanks yashiro, I'll give that a go. If it doesn't work then, as you say, it's probably not worth worrying about if everything else is working ok.

Eddieu · 28 May 2014 at 15:15

I Had This Too

I had this to bought a new pc started it up same problem same theme.
reinstalled drivers 3x... nothing
it is a windows 8 theme glitch change the theme and it will be fine