Added by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi, last edited by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi on Nov 05, 2009  (view change) show comment

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NeoSmart Technologies' ToolTipFixer

ToolTipFixer is a "patch" of sorts by NeoSmart Technologies created to permenantly fix one of Windows' most annoying & oldest bugs to date. The "hidden tooltip" bug has been around since the days of Windows 95, and became progressively worse with each Windows Upgrade – until Windows Vista, where it only appears from time to time; but it is still there nevertheless. If you are experiencing tooltips hidden behind the taskbar, then this is for you.

If your tooltips are appearing the toolbar, then ToolTipFixer is what you need.

The Bug…

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - but if the first picture is worth a thousand, then the second is priceless:

With NST ToolTipFixer installed:

As you can see – no bug! Best of all, this patch (unlike some of other "fixes" floating around the web) really works, only needs to be installed/run once (whereas other patches have you running it every time you experience this problem), never gets in your way, can be safely & easily uninstalled, and best of all, it's free.

How this is different from other solutions

Other solutions floating around the net all have a couple (or more) drawbacks, here's how TTF is different:

  • Set it and forget it. No need to keep running a program every time you experience this bug.
  • Does one thing only – and does it right. Don't worry about unneeded bloat and useless features.
  • It's free!

What Microsoft has to Say

This bug has been around since the very first day Microsoft invented "the shell" with explorer.exe, the taskbar, and the concept of a tooltip - with Windows 95. In 2006, Microsoft finally admitted that this bug exists in Windows XP... But their "solution"?

To resolve this issue, use one of the following methods:
• Log off and then log back on to the current account.
• Restart your computer.

Gee! How helpful!

Testimonials

I just wanted to say thanks for the ToolTipFixer. It is AMAZING. Something so simple (and stupid) has bugged me for years and years. It was so random with no rhyme or reason, it drove me crazy.

—J. Whitworth

Download

Currently, the latest version of ToolTipFixer is version 1.0.1, and is freely available for download (under 100kb!) at the download page.

Donate

As with all other NeoSmart projects/services, NST ToolTipFixer is 100% absolutely free. If you found this patch that Microsoft refused to bother with all these years to be useful, how about showing a token of your appreciation?

Comments  (Hide Comments)

Installed it. Works fine. But it takes up 6K of memory.

Posted by Anonymous at Sep 27, 2007 20:05 | Reply To This

More correctly, it uses 6380K (=6.38 Meg) of memory.  That's a lot for such a small program with such a simple function.

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 18, 2008 14:51 | Reply To This

If it gives "Failed to initialize properly 0xc0000135" it's because it needs the .NET Framework.  That's no shame, so I think mentioning that requirement on this page would be helpful, unlike MS' error messages. (Or am I mistaken?)

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 12, 2007 13:00 | Reply To This

Update: After I installed .NET all was fine. This fix works too, awesome.

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 12, 2007 14:05 | Reply To This

Btw I am such a smuck. The .NET req. is on your page so ignore my ramblings.

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 12, 2007 14:08 | Reply To This

Works great... what took you so long? Thanks much.

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 27, 2007 12:59 | Reply To This

Thank-you! This has been bugging me for years, can't believe MS never fixed it!

Posted by Anonymous at Nov 05, 2007 01:18 | Reply To This

It works! I think MS was trying to slowly drive their customers crazy by refusing to fix this bug.

Posted by Anonymous at Nov 09, 2007 23:44 | Reply To This

Superb fix. Noted and blogged it in my bog here - http://atpeaz.placidthoughts.com/index.php?/archives/239-Tip-Fixing-the-Windows-Taskbar-Tooltip-Bug-The-perfect-solution\!.html

Posted by Anonymous at Nov 10, 2007 05:46 | Reply To This

This is awesome... Hope you don't mink I created an addon of this program that is meant to be integrated into Windows XP CD-Roms using nLite

 http://www.wincert.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2071

Posted by Anonymous at Nov 20, 2007 07:24 | Reply To This

Oh sweet lord thank you so much for this - I cannot believe that KB article from M$ - restart  your computer to fix a tooltip!

 Balaji

Posted by Anonymous at Dec 04, 2007 03:42 | Reply To This

Just works!

I installed an earlier version on VISTA that did not, but this one (1.0.1) works...

Posted by Anonymous at Jan 02, 2008 15:35 | Reply To This

I miss the times when you got a 30kb utility for something like that... now there has to be a pointless setup routine,and a 40mb+ runtime requirement... no thanks... it would be fair to post the registry entries ,so .netHater can this on their own !

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 06, 2008 15:46 | Reply To This

for all those who doesnt like dotPOINTLESSnet,get nircmd!

a small commandline based utility and use :

"nircmd win settopmost class "tooltips_class32" 1"

this sets the windows class for tooltips to topmost,after that tool tips work like they should.

nircmd just sets this value ,and exits,no cpu/ram is further used !!! you can create a shortcut/.cmd file for this,so in case your tooltips re hiding,just use the shortcut and your done.

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 06, 2008 16:11 | Reply To This

thanks for this tip! it works great!

i use tooltipfixer on two computers, but it didn't work at all on a third one, so this will be my way of sorting the bug there

Posted by Anonymous at Aug 14, 2008 18:01 | Reply To This
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Please type the word appearing in the picture.


Thanks - works great.

http://junglist.gen.nz

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 21, 2008 09:40 | Reply To This

YESSS!! Thank you for this tiny utility!!

Why is M$ not able to fix it? "Patch day" ... Automatic update  etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.? Strange.....

NeoSmart Technologies rocks! M$ s***s!


Thank you from getting rid of this annoying problem!

-- hfrmobile

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 28, 2008 10:56 | Reply To This

Thanks a lot!

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 29, 2008 16:25 | Reply To This

Is there an option to do a silent install?

Posted by Anonymous at Mar 14, 2008 17:50 | Reply To This

Of course. Here are the available command-line switches:

/S		Silent install/uninstall
/D=dir		Installation Directory
/NCRC		Do not verify setup files
Posted by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi at Mar 16, 2008 16:21 | Reply To This

Hey Computer Guru,

 I've come across an issue with your patch and two older Windows games.  They are Fallout and Spycraft: The Great Game.  Something in your patch affects how the full screen video and mouse cursor work.  The video goes black and the mouse cursor is literally painting the current video on the screen.  I'm trying to find out what is it about your tool that causes this so I can look into why other users have these problems without your product installed (perhaps they have a service like yours with similar functions?).

 Please let me know your thoughts on this.

 Thanks,

skouby 

Posted by Anonymous at Mar 18, 2008 06:02 | Reply To This

Although I have all the .NET installations (and Service Packs), this didn't work for me - each time Windows starts, I get an error message saying that the service failed to start. This on Win 2003 Server.

Any ideas what to do to fix?

Posted by Anonymous at Mar 25, 2008 16:20 | Reply To This

Thankyou very much for this utility. All run very well except when I use the Media Center Interface in XP Pro.

Your utility prevents full screen entry; as if someone was using the mouse all the time.

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 04, 2008 05:30 | Reply To This

This program works very well, but when running it on XP x64, I find that the memory usage is around 13 megabytes and continues to go up.  Does this program have any known memory leaks?

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 19, 2008 01:19 | Reply To This

I'm noticing the same thing on XP x64.  I guess it's a good thing that the reason I'm using x64 is to support my 4GB of RAM.

Seriously, though; I can't understand why this utility should be eating up so much memory, especially if it's using the .NET framework.  Is this some sort of artifact of .NET and maybe it's not really using this much memory?  It is just a memory leak?  Wish I had the source so I could see if it's fixable. 

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 20, 2008 02:58 | Reply To This

This bug has been fixed on Windows XP Service Pack 3.

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 25, 2008 17:56 | Reply To This

Are you sure?I've experienced on Windows XP SP3 during the beta...... so I don't think that's true.

Posted by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi at Apr 28, 2008 14:56 | Reply To This

I don't know if the bug is fixed in the final XP SP3 release, but I sure know that SP3 breaks the NST ToolTipFixer service.

After applying SP3, the NST service will no longer autostart.  Event Viewer shows the following:
Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the NST ToolTipFixer service to connect.
and then the next (separate) entry shows: 

The NST ToolTipFixer service failed to start due to the following error:

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

So I sure hope it's fixed in SP3 because I'm sure not going to manually start the service every boot...

Posted by Anonymous at May 07, 2008 22:58 | Reply To This

This is a known issue and is being looked upon right now if it is a bug with TTF or if it is something else. We will have updated information out as soon as we know more ourselves. Thank you.

Posted by Alex T. at May 09, 2008 01:32 | Reply To This

ToolTipFixer has been confirmed working on Windows XP SP3.

However under certain circumstances the service will fail to start for some reason - we're looking into that matter. I'd advise uninstalling TTF before upgrading to SP3 then reinstalling it as a temporary workaround.   

Posted by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi at May 14, 2008 11:51 | Reply To This

Thank you... Had this problem since I built my computer 6 months ago. I use VTP to transform my desktop and presumed this was just an inherent fault I had to put up with.... Not any longer - works like a dream ! NW

Posted by Anonymous at Jun 16, 2008 12:22 | Reply To This

Works great, as attested to above.  However, I really am confused that it uses more memory than some of my far more significant applications.  This really makes me wonder what this little tool is really doing behind the scenes.

Posted by Anonymous at Aug 14, 2008 15:34 | Reply To This

This tool works fine in sp3.Oleg from Sofia/Bulgaria.

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 09, 2008 19:00 | Reply To This

Very elegant solution to a very annoying "feature" of Windows that Microsoft just wont fix themselves.

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 15, 2008 12:23 | Reply To This

Trayicon_handler.ocx is flagged bij my antivirus/antspyware tool. Is that part of ToolTipFixer??

Posted by Anonymous at Nov 03, 2008 17:41 | Reply To This

No. Looks like you've been infected by something.

Posted by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi at Jan 19, 2009 18:09 | Reply To This

Hi,

Tooltipfixer is generating an odd behavior in some applications. To demonstrate this, please follow these steps:

1. Download and install the Ultragram application from http://www.ultragram.com/
2. Launch the application.
3. Click on Help | Contents and minimize the help window.
4. Click on File | Open samples OR File | Open project OR on the Properties icon in the toolbar. Each of these commands should open a dialog box.
5. The dialog box is not displayed.
6. Click anywhere in the main window, the dialog box appears.
7. If the TooltipFixer service is disabled, the problem disappears.

Thanks anyway for this useful utility.

–
Patrick

Posted by Anonymous at Nov 04, 2008 13:51 | Reply To This

Nice try but this software has bugz. Get nircmd it works and doesn't use any RAM.

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 19, 2009 17:11 | Reply To This

To the anon who posted the info regarding nircmd, thank you. It is a non-resident application which will solve the problem. You can even create a batch file to just execute the command whenever the problem might return. The command line is:

nircmd win settopmost class "tooltips_class32" 1

There are quite a few additionally useful commands as well. I highly recommend looking into it.

Posted by Anonymous at Dec 29, 2008 06:52 | Reply To This

What versions of Windows is this tool for?

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 03, 2009 23:35 | Reply To This

Windows XP or Vista, for sure, though it may also work with previous versions of Windows.

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 08, 2009 22:05 | Reply To This

I must be doing something wrong because while this program shows up on the program list it has done nothing to fix my problems. The documentation (besides showing pretty pictures) is worthless. I removed the P.O.S.

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 09, 2009 04:49 | Reply To This

THe instructions here http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Fedora
are great. I am hoping Mr. Mahmoud Al-Qudsi or other experts will reply to this:

Is there any step by step instructions to install
Fedora on a machine which has vista already installed. I would like to
create partition for Fedora and be able to dual boot Fedora or Vista?

Thanks,
Suresh

Posted by Anonymous at Apr 12, 2009 00:25 | Reply To This

Hi. In the future I'm going to keep here links to their sites. But I do not worry about the sites where my link is removed. So if you do not want to see a mountain of links, simply delete this message. After 2 weeks, I will come back and check.

Posted by Anonymous at May 12, 2009 11:54 | Reply To This

Problem seems fixed in Windows 7 Release Candidate. (build 7100) was fixed after I reported it about 12 or so times with the Beta and was actually fixed in build 7077 or so...

Posted by Anonymous at May 20, 2009 08:48 | Reply To This

Thank you, Arigatou

Posted by Anonymous at May 21, 2009 13:12 | Reply To This

The donate link isn't working.

Posted by Anonymous at Jul 19, 2009 06:02 | Reply To This