A fix for one person that had problems with OneNote screen clipping

The old OneNote Discussion Group got migrated to a social group over on MSDN. This thread started a few weeks ago: https://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addonenote/thread/d0553155-485e-42d1-a79b-d2e2a3a1a585 The gist of it was that sometimes when using the OneNote Screen Clipper, the screen would go all white and the clipping inserted into OneNote would be solid black.

Similar reports had come up a few times in the past and I wanted to get more information about what could be causing this. As a tester, it is always frustrating to sign off on a feature (like screen clipping) and then get bug reports on it. In this case, "Stylonorus" took me up on my request for more information via email and pitched in a hand. I had suspected this had something to do with video card drivers and I wanted to find out if he had the latest drivers for his card installed. There are a few places in Windows to check, but the easiest to use in email is the log file from "msinfo32.exe." This is a utility included in all versions of Windows and does a good job of polling the system and generating a log file.

He emailed me the log file (expect it to be about 2MB if you save it yourself) and I looked at the Display properties under Components. Here's what I saw:

This was interesting to me since the video drivers for the Nvidia Quadro video card were being used along with a "LogMeIn Mirror Driver." I had no idea what LogMeIn was, so off to bing to check it out. They have a product that lets you log into your machine from any other client which is also running the LogMeIn software. Pretty slick - kind of like Mesh (www.livemesh.com) – which is what I use. Anyway, since they were installing a video driver along with the Nvidia driver I wanted to see if this driver could be the culprit. Looking around their support group, I saw this post about other problems folks were having with Nvidia drivers - https://community.logmein.com/t5/User-to-User-Support/Mirror-Driver-Issue/m-p/12741/highlight/true#M7390. They give instructions there about how to install LogMeIn without the mirror driver.

Stylonorus confirmed that uninstalling the mirror driver did in fact allow screen clipping to work normally.

So if you are using LogMeIn, this may help you. Even if not and are experiencing problems related to video (of which OneNote Screen Clipping may be an example), then take a look at MSInfo32.exe to see if you have up to date video drivers, or if some other application is installing video drivers as well.

I hope this helps!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 12, 2010
  The same problem arises when Live Mesh is running and you remote into the machine using the traditional MSTSC method, next time you login the screen captures in most software don't always work as expected until next reboot.

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2010
  I often get this error- I'm not using any video capture software, but it sometimes crops up when using a second screen on my laptop. Normal Thinkpad with up-to-date drivers. Maybe related to limited video memory?

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2010
  What type of laptop do you have, and how is the second monitor connected?  

• Anonymous
  July 14, 2010
  Hi John, It's a Thinkpad R400, 14.1inch screen. I connect a second monitor through the VGA port and extend the display across both.  I use two different screens (depending upon location), a 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 - while I can't prove it, I recall that if the higher res screen gave the problem, the smaller screen would work.  Sometimes there's nothing for it but to restart. I'm using Onenote 2007 and now 2010 under enterprise Vista. I recall similar problems with a previous HP laptop, also with shared video memory.

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2010
  Funny that Snagit seems to not have a problem on my PC, but Screen Clipping does...

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2011
  I also experience this problem, and am not using any mirror drivers. However, if I use the same screen clipping facility in Word 2010, or Powerpoint 2010, I do not get the screen burn problem

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2011
  I'm also having the same issue.  When I boot my (Win 7 Ult x64) system, the screen capture (OneNote 2010) will work fine with until I fire up Internet explorer or firefox.  After that, the only way to get screen capture to work again is to restart the system.

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2011
  Correction:  Once screen capture goes haywire, logging off and logging back onto the system resolves the problem. . . . until I fire up Internet Explorer or Firefox.

• Anonymous
  January 23, 2011
  What brand of video card do you have, and which build of the drivers?  You can check this by running MSINFO32.exe.

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2011
  I have an ATI Radeon HD 4650, Driver Version: 8.801.0.0 (per msinfo.exe), ATI Catalyst Control Center version 2010.1125.2142.38865

• Anonymous
  February 03, 2011
  If you look at MSINFO32.exe, what date were the drivers last updated?