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In Windows, I suddenly see a black-bordered transparent rectangle, instead of the full contents of the window, when I drag it. I probably hit some magic key (wonder which one) that turned full-window dragging off, but how do I turn it on again?

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Note: the question mentioned by David is not a duplicate, as this behavior occurred without me explicitly changing the setting, and after a few hours of doing nothing, it magically restored itself.

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Abel
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  • possible duplicate of [How do you turn on and off window repaint while drag moving/re-sizing window in Windows 7?](http://superuser.com/questions/175448/how-do-you-turn-on-and-off-window-repaint-while-drag-moving-re-sizing-window-in) – DavidPostill Jul 30 '15 at 16:44
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    @DavidPostill: I don't think it is a duplicate. After stepping away from my computer for a couple of hours, the full-window dragging feature magically returned. Looks to me like a strange glitch in Windows GUI behavior. – Abel Jul 31 '15 at 13:47
  • Windows Aero will disable some features when the CPU is too busy. See [How can I prevent Windows from disabling Aero?](http://superuser.com/q/270453) for more info. – DavidPostill Jul 31 '15 at 13:52

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Cisco Webex turns off a function in Windows that allows for transparent windows and and taskbar (In Vista it was called Aero, I'm not sure if that's still the case in Windows 7 and 10).

The reason it does this is because the software is designed to let people see your screen if necessary. When you are sending your screen to someone else the graphics card doesn't get a chance to process the output as it's being sent through the network as well. Although it's possible for a computer to capture the output of the video card, it can be extremely slow. To cover most use case scenarios, Webex just turns transparency off.

Abel
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Arthur
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  • Interesting. In my case, parts of Aero functionality were still on (like the alt-tab and alt-esc areo graphics, the taskbar mouse-over popups), only the full-window dragging was off. Also, I would assume it to only switch on when Webex is used with screen-sharing. Similarly, Teamviewer, by default, switches off Aero. – Abel Aug 01 '15 at 19:08
  • Is there a way to turn off this functionality? – Adam Wykes Jan 12 '17 at 19:17
  • if you're savvy with programming this answer has info on how to change this setting programmatically: https://stackoverflow.com/a/29551557/504398 – Ryan_S Dec 10 '18 at 16:53