Acer Aspire E1-571G - Windows 10 hover tooltip issue

Hello,

I have an Acer Aspire E1-571G laptop with Windows 10 installed. Whenever I use VS Code, Android Studio etc. for programming, hover tooltips, such as lint, only show up if the window is unfocused. When the window is focused, i.e. I'm using it, then the hover tooltip/suggestion doesn't work. I haven't tested it with other applications as I mostly use this laptop for programming. I'm sure this is either a Acer Aspire or Windows 10 issue but seeing as I can't find anything related to it on the internet, it feels like its a Windows 10 on Acer Aspire issue.

Does anyone know how to solve this? Registry modifying?

To reiterate, hover tooltips work when the window is unfocused, i.e. I'm using a different window/application like Chrome and I hover over VS Code without focusing/clicking on the window itself.

Thanks

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JackE

I guess this must mean Microsoft's VS forum was useless as usual like most of its other forums? https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/318608/debugging-tooltips-not-working-properly.html ?

Jack E/NJ

Milie

JackE said:

I guess this must mean Microsoft's VS forum was useless as usual like most of its other forums? https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/318608/debugging-tooltips-not-working-properly.html ?

Jack E/NJ

How does this help exactly!

JackE

Did you pose this issue and express your thoughts about its possible cause on the VS or Android forums? Any useful suggestions from those forums? Jack E/NJ

Milie

Yes I did, and through Github and Through Android Studio and the issue has come down to it being a Windows 10 and Acer issue... Still happening after all these months.

I'm pretty sure its a driver issue related to the GPU (onboard and dedicated) but I don't know which drivers to use.

JackE

Have you tried any freeware driver tools yet like DriverBooster to see if they can pick up anything new? Jack E/NJ

Milie

JackE said:

Have you tried any freeware driver tools yet like DriverBooster to see if they can pick up anything new? Jack E/NJ

Yes, I tried it recently with no success. There was even new gpu drivers releaseed this year which I installed to no avail. I've been struggling with this issue for quite a few months. Every so often when the laptop is started, it will work for a short period before going back to no displaying any tooltips or certain menus.

To clarify, with the use of a couple examples of the issue at hand, such as:
1) When I hover over a piece of code, the installed language and framework(plugin) should automatically show added information in a popup tooltip, through the IDE.
2) Holding and dragging a selected Tab in Chrome should 'detach' the tab and allow it to be moved or to create an entirely new window(instance) of Chrome.
3) Pressing 'Start', navigating to Command Prompt and right clicking should bring up a menu displaying 'run as admin', 'open file location', etc. This menu pops up for a split second before disappearing which is what happens in my IDEs as well as in Chrome.
This issue is obviously persistent across the whole system and not just the examples mentioned above.

This is why I know it is an issue with my laptop model and Windows 10. This never happened on Windows 8, 8.1 or very early versions of Windows 10.

I appreciate the assistance over the past few months.

JackE

>>>This never happened on Windows 8, 8.1 or very early versions of Windows 10. >>>

I now suspect this might be due to the E1-571G being available with two different BIOS chips. One a Win7 era chip machine that might have been sold as a Win7 to Win8.x upgrade. And a Win8 era chip machine that was sold as a factory Win8.x installation. If we know which BIOS you have, we might be able to work around it. Press Win+R. Enter 'msinfo32.exe' . In the right pane, what BIOS version number is shown? Jack E/NJ

Milie

I'm not sure which it would have been but I know it came installed with Windows 8...

BIOS Version/Date: Insyde Corp. V2.13, 2013/01/17
SMBIOS Version: 2.7

JackE

You seem to have two choices. Neither are guaranteed to work due mainly to your machine's age and incompatibilities with Win10's latest crop of rapid-fire major releases.

(1) Try re-installing VS in Win10's compatibility mode for Win8.1 by right clickling on the installation executable, clicking properties, then clicking compatibility tab.

(2) Try updating to the latest available BIOS firmare v2.21 at this link https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/4242?b=1

If it was mine, I'd only try #1 compatibility mode installation. Because #2 a BIOS update has a significant risk of bricking the machine. Furthermore, this update is already more than 6 years old. I don't expect any newer versions will be released to try to accomodate all the Win10 changes that've happened since then.

In my opinion, you'd likely have more stability running studio by either re-installing Win8.1 or dual booting Win10 alongside Win8.1 or Mint19.3

Jack E/NJ

Milie

I ended up buying an new (bigger) SSD and did a clean install of the latest Windows 10 and the issue fixed itself. Haven't had any problems with it since. I'm not sure why the old SSD would have caused this issue apart from maybe corrupting something in the system files?

Luckily the solution was due to me needing larger storage. Anyway, thank you for your assistance. I appreciate you taking the time.