Part of stimuli in center of screen disappears

SuperLab SuperLab 4 Support
1

Greetings,

When we run task in Superlab 4.5, frequently the first screen has a bug if we leave it on the screen for more than a few seconds. It looks like the middle of the screen disappears, removing all stimuli and text that are within the center of the screen. It is about half the screen that disappears, always a box in the middle.

For example, the first screen presented says “Press spacebar to begin” in black text that appears on a single line and takes up most of the width of the monitor. After a few seconds, without pressing any keys, the middle disappears so now it looks like this:
“Press______________egin”
[underline added b/c this thread removes extra spaces]

It does this most but not all of the time. We thought it only occurred the first time we ran a task after opening Superlab, but it happens more frequently than that. Probably about 50% of the tasks we ran today had this happen. It seems to be limited to the first event presented (typically our “Press spacebar to begin” screen), but also seems to happen on other screens intermittently when nothing is pressed after a few seconds.

Please advise.

Thanks!

2

This is in fact a bug in SuperLab that does not happen very often. We do have a few workarounds to hopefully get rid of the white box. The first one we suggest is Disable “Windows 7 Aero” (another name for this could be “Apply the Windows 7 Basic theme”).

Here are two relevant resources:

http://theoldergeek.com/windows-tweaks/disable-aero-theme-windows-7

http://www.klauskomenda.com/archives/2011/03/06/hdmi-vlc-and-wmp-and-how-aero-can-ruin-almost-everything/

Another Suggestion:

To stop getting the white box during a running experiment, you should make sure no windows are open on your desktop.

  1. Shutting down running applications can help the problem. However, the SuperLab window itself is a problem, and you can’t shut down SuperLab. If you have a windows folder open, you need to minimize or close it.

  2. If you cannot shut things down, then minimize the windows.

  3. We need to try and get the SuperLab window itself out of the way. You should move the SuperLab window down until it is almost off-screen, but still allowing you to hit the RUN button.

3

Disabling Windows Aero (selecting Windows 7 basic theme) seems to have done the trick. Will update if the problem returns. Thanks!