Solved Severe Open-Shell Problem on Win11 24H2 When System Resumes from Sleep. Any fix?

Hopefully my attached screenshot illustrates the issue well. Doesn't happen every time on resume from sleep but does happen more often than not. Have tested this with Open-Shell 4.4.191 and Open-Shell 4.4.194. Get the same results with each.



Anyone else experiencing this? Anyone know of any fixes for this?

No problems , with latest Open Shell in Win11 23 H2........!

4.4.194 is rock solid here.

Yes , on my rig too !
Had to completely remove previous version , coz in some uninstallers two programs showed up still .................

I think I got the solution for this as follows.

I looked in the registry at the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration

In there were several sub-key entries concerning the monitor display. I discovered that all of them had (for the monitor I am using 1920 x 1200) incorrect values for the monitor so following instructions in these locations:

Tutorial: How to change Windows 10 "default" resolution
Windows changing size & position after monitor sleep
Windows 7 moves/resizes windows on monitor power cycle

I changed all the following instances of values to enter for "DwmClipBox.bottom" and "DwmClipBox.right", "PrimSurfSize.cx" and "PrimSurfSize.cy", "ActiveSize.cy" and "ActiveSize.cx" to values that accurately match the resolution of my monitor, 1920 x 1200. It is important that when you make the changes you select to enter the values as decimal values: the registry editor will correctly enter the hex equivalent numbers when you click the OK button. So, having made those changes, I then closed the registry editor and rebooted the system hoping I had solved the issue. In the event the same problem occurred on resume from sleep – I tried this many multiple times with always the same result, issue persisted.

Then I had a look in the registry again in the "SIMULATED_XXX...\00" and "SIMULATED_XXX...\00\00" Configuration sub-keys and noted that neither of these two keys had a "Stride" value in them at all. So by way of experiment I then created a REG_DWORD value titled Stride in each of those two keys and entered the correct decimal value for them — in my case the decimal value for Stride is 7680. After doing this I closed the registry editor and rebooted the machine. The result of doing this is that after lots of testing I don't seem to have the issue any more. So Open-Shell was never the culprit.

For anyone that runs into this issue in the future the formula to get the correct Stride value is as follows:

((monitorXcoordinate * 32 + 7) /8)

By way of illustration for my own monitor that calculation would be:

((1920 * 32 + 7) /8) = 7680.875

However, when entering the Stride value in the registry you should only use the integer part of the value, in my case 7680.

I hope I've explained all this clearly.

So, for now I'll mark this thread as solved. And, for now, hope that I really have found the solution.

Dang! The problem returned. Have to (re-)mark this as no longer 'Solved'. I did a sleep for an extended period of time, around 55 minutes. Resumed from sleep and Open-Shell Start Menu button back up at top-left of the monitor. So now I'm thinking that longish period of sleep might cause the problem to recur. I'll have to test this over the next few days. In the meantime any ideas, suggestions?

Should say that things seem to be working okay if the sleep isn't of a longish duration. And also Open-Shell isn't involved in this per se.

OpenShell website has a piece of software called "Utility" It deep clean removes OpenShell, make a backup of your config file then try that. If it works then restore your backup to eliminate errors in that.

Seems you better use this tool to remove it completely ( after backup settings !) , before updating the program...........!

After a lot of testing I decided that the problem with no taskbar is really a problem with Windows. Some of my tests included not having Open-Shell launched at all and occasionally the same issue would show up with Windows 11 own native Start Menu Button if, as part of testing, I didn't have Open-Shell launched at all – so this is not an Open-Shell issue at all.

As things stand I wouldn't be using Windows at all if it wasn't for Open-Shell so I'll just have to live with the issue and hope Microsoft are aware of it and provide a fix in the future.

With Open-Shell running to get out of the mess of no taskbar I have to right-click the Open-Shell Start Menu Button and select "Exit". This closes Open-Shell and immediately the taskbar appears (as if there was no problem at all). To get Open-Shell running again I found that if I use the taskbar Search function and start to enter the search-word "start" then I get an offer to launch "Open-Shell Menu Settings" so I click on that, OK the GUI that turns up, then Open-Shell immediately launches and I'm back with a fully functioning taskbar and with Open-Shell working as normal too.

As part of trying to find a solution this I created a batch file that kills Explorer and then immediately restarts Explorer again. This worked in as much as it would get the taskbar to appear though there was an issue that one of my much used apps would have its icon missing from the System Tray. To get around that I would have to end that task in Task Manager then relaunch the app to get the System Tray icon back. That I thought too messy, so just soldier on with getting the taskbar to appear by going the 'Open-Shell Exit route' as described above.

@BuddhaNature


Too many people do NOT have issues with Open-Shell and Win 11 24H2 and Sleep.
I would think that a "complete" uninstall, then reinstall of Open Shell would solve your problems.

Many times, switching Windows versions will "break" some 3rd party tweaking apps.
The authors of these apps will usually find and fix the problem fairly fast.


There was a major issue with Explorer Patcher and Win 11 23H2, that the author of Explorer Patcher fixed in a few days.
I don't remember if it was... just an update or an uninstall/reinstall, that fixed it.



I also have a 16;10 monitor.
In my case, I just "Stopped caring and learned to love the Win 11 Start menu".




Long story, short... I did this, with just a few of @Brink 's tutorials.

Agree ( from my own experience ) , total uninstall , reboot , remove leftovers , reboot , install again ( latest version !) .
Be sure to start Open Shell with every reboot .........

I have only ever had to clean and reinstall OpenShell once and that was to eliminate something i cocked up, my OpenShell is pretty well customised to suit me.

Yes , works fine in 11 too.............

Ghot said:

Too many people do NOT have issues with Open-Shell and Win 11 24H2 and Sleep.
I would think that a "complete" uninstall, then reinstall of Open Shell would solve your problems.

Click to expand...

I agree that there is no indication that multiple users are having issues with Open-Shell and resume from sleep. If you read my later posts in this thread you will see that I clearly come to that conclusion.

Nevertheless, I have done the following:

1. From Installed Apps uninstalled Open-Shell and reboot the system.
2. (Re-)Install Open-Shell and reboot the system.
3. With Open-Shell running test what happens on resume from Sleep — problem is still there.

I am at a loss with this now. I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Ghot said:

In my case, I just "Stopped caring and learned to love the Win 11 Start menu".

Click to expand...

From Win7 onwards (I had no involvement with Win8.1 so can't comment) the Windows so-called Start Menu has and is a utter abomination. Stripped of functionality and ease of use. I don't want to live with that.

Try the option to replace your Start button with a custom one, then make sure to have the Align to edge of taskbar checkbox checked.



Win11 button.zip

If this still doesn't fix your problem, download and install ExplorerPatcher. Use it to replace the Windows 11 taskbar with the Windows 10 (ExplorerPatcher) option. As a matter of fact, I recommend doing this even if the above suggestion does fix your problem.






Of course you'd have to always update ExplorerPatcher to the latest Release version or latest Pre-release version (whichever is the latest).

BuddhaNature said:

and is a utter abomination

Click to expand...

I agree, 100%.
But... I still decided to just deal with it.

And I "do" like to tweak Windows.

hdmi said:

Try the option to replace your Start button with a custom one, then make sure to have the Align to edge of taskbar checkbox checked.

Click to expand...

I have now tied as you suggested and the problem not only persists but is made worse by doing that. What happens is that when the problem occurs on resume from sleep the taskbar is entirely missing, as 'usual', but with the added twist that the Start icon that would 'normally' be jammed up at the top-left corner of the screen is entirely missing too — nothing there to see. To get out of that mess I have to right-click on the Desktop, choose Personalise > Taskbar > turn Widgets 'on', at which point a fully functioning taskbar appears, along with a functioning Start button. Then I just turn Widgets off again and close the Personalise window.

I'll pass on installing ExplorerPatcher. I don't think it's good to go digging too deeply at Explorer and the taskbar.

On systems that support Modern Standby, the System event that can be used to trigger a task in Task Scheduler after the system wakes up is ProviderName: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power, EventID: 507. So, until you find a more permanent solution, you could always decide to try this simple workaround:

1. Open the Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc)
2. Create a new task and name it however you like
3. Go to the Triggers tab and create a new trigger
4. Set Begin the task to On an event
5. Under Settings:
   Log: System
   Source: Kernel-Power
   
   (It's a long list, but you can type in the first few letters to make the scrollbar auto-navigate.)​
   Event ID: 507
6. Under Advanced settings:
   Check the checkbox in front of Delay task for:
   Click on the text that's inside the box next to it so the text will be automatically selected in blue
   Type in 5 s
   
   (Here, 5 is the number of seconds that the Task Scheduler will wait to run the task after the computer wakes up; change it to whatever works best for you.)​
7. Click on OK
8. Go to the Actions tab and create a new action
   Program/script: %ProgramFiles%\Open-Shell\StartMenu.exe
   Add arguments (optional): -exit
9. Click on OK
10. Create a new action again
    Program/script: %ProgramFiles%\Open-Shell\StartMenu.exe
11. Click on OK
12. (Optional) If you are on a laptop, go to the Conditions tab and uncheck the Start the task only if the computer is on AC power checkbox
13. Click on OK
14. Close the Task Scheduler
15. Done!

Have you made any effort to check if the underlying OS is healthy? This is clearly NOT an OpenShell problem.