I'm having a problem where the floating windows (Game Status, Navigation Bar, Captured Pieces, etc.) sporadically disappear. They're still there, just invisible -- and all I see is the wallpaper behind them (the Chessmaster wallpaper, not the Windows wallpaper).

To get the windows to reappear I can drag them off the screen and back, or minimize and restore the main Chessmaster window, but eventually (a few seconds to a few minutes) they disappear again. Certain parts of the windows will come back by themselves when they refresh, such as when someone makes a move or a new page comes up in a tutorial.

The chess board itself has no problems and always appears just fine.

I've downloaded the latest video drivers; removed all custom content; tweaked the graphics options; repaired my Chessmaster installation; completely uninstalled, removed all files, and reinstalled from scratch; and installed the latest patch, but nothing is working. The weird thing is that this just started recently, but I can't think of anything that had changed on my PC around that time.

Has anyone had this issue and know of a fix? Anyone want to just take a blind guess or offer any other troubleshooting suggestions? I can provide screenshots and system info if needed.

Thanks in advance.

One other person has had this problem:

Windows disappear online/problem

Are you sure nothing has changed? There is plenty of software that, if you aren't aware, will download and install updates automatically (i.e., Windows Update).

Please provide some information on your system... that would be most helpful.

Hey, thanks for the reply. Here's another annoyingly long post. (Sorry!)

Actually a few things have changed on my PC but I don't know when the problem even started so I'm not sure which of those things might've caused it. I used Chessmaster for a while with no issues, up to maybe February of this year, and then I didn't use it once until a couple weeks ago. That's when I noticed the problem.

One thing that happened over the summer while Chessmaster was on hiatus is that I got a nasty disk-write error, after which Windows wouldn't start at all. After finding a bad hard drive cable, I replaced it and got back into Windows, only to find that some files were corrupted (a few bigtime .dll's in Windows\System32). I manually copied these files from my other PC and it started working like a charm (I couldn't believe it). Since then I've been on the lookout for problems with other missing or corrupted files, but I haven't seen any, so I don't *think* this could've caused it...but who knows? (This is why I tried reinstalling Chessmaster and my latest video drivers.)

I've also downloaded a zillion Windows updates...all the so-called critical updates and malicious software removal tools, etc.

I'm running Windows XP Pro w/ SP3. (I just installed SP3 tonight, to hopefully replace any other corrupted files I might have...kind of a long shot. That didn't change anything.)

As far as hardware, I'm running a Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz, with 1.5GB of RAM. The video card is an ATI Radeon 9500 or 9700 (I honestly can't remember which, but one driver covers both) w/ 128MB of RAM. The only thing that has changed with the hardware is that I installed more RAM -- I originally had 750MB, and I took out the 256MB chip and installed a 1GB chip.

I hope this info helps. If you want to know anything else specific just let me know. Thanks for taking the time to read all this!

Wow... that's a lot of things to have changed.

I have no clue as to what the problem could be, or how to resolve it, short of reformatting your hard drive and re-installing everything -- something I'm sure you don't want to do.

You might want to try contacting Ubisoft Technical Support...

Oh yeah, reformatting is...undesirable. It would take weeks to get everything reinstalled. I'll just break down and do that if necessary, but since everything other than Chessmaster is working perfectly, I'm looking for any alternative at the moment. I'll send a message to Ubisoft tech support to see if they have any ideas. Thank you so much for hearing me out and giving this a shot!

I wrote to Ubi tech support and told them about the issue, and I also referred them to this post for more info. So they replied telling me they have no idea and I should post it in this forum. (I wonder if they actually read my email, or just had the ol' SuperDuperTechBot™ search it for keywords and spit back reply # 143-28a?)

Well, I guess I'm stuck with this until I get around to reformatting my hard drive. Gleefully looking forward to that...

Anyway, KHollister, thanks again for your time and effort!

Hello..

I have had the same problem with the menus disappearing sporadically. I fixed the problem in Chessmaster 10 by changing the video setting to opengl mode, but have yet to fix this problem in Grandmaster. Anyone else have any luck ?

I have this issue too. HOw do you change from Direct3d to OpenGL. I have a Radeon HD 4850 and don't understand how to change modes,

many thanks

Peter

Start--Programs--Ubisoft--Chessmaster 10th Edition--Settings (or something like that)

I have the same issue.

Floating windows disappearing and the same behaviour if I want them to be visible: dragging or using the menu hide and show again.

I have a brand new system with the amd 4850 dual processor and nvidia 8200 graphic card.

I think that can be an issue with this kind of hardware. It's something related to direct draw maybe or .net framework.

Ayone solved the problem ?

I just purchased the game (1 week ago) but I see that the problem is old here.

Thanks