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I am experiencing an issue whereby all open windows fade out as if unresponsive and yet are fully functioning. New windows and dialog boxes appear at full brightness but the existing windows do not. Dragging a tab in Chrome to make a new window puts it in full brightness as does closing and reopening any apps.

As far as I can tell changing the compiz settings is not having an effect. Certainly when I switch of fade unresponsive windows nothing changes.

This problem appears to be intermittent and I do not know of any specific trigger. It has only been an issue since upgrading from the last LTS version. That has left me wondering if this is a Unity issue but I lack enough experience with Unity (or Ubuntu) to truly figure out what the cause is.

My Specs are:

Release 12.04 (precise) 64-bit; Kernel Linux 3.2.0-40-generic; GNOME 3.4.2; RAM 16GB (Reported as 15.7GB); CHIP: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Processor.

I've not yet attempted core unlocking on the two disabled cores so I know it is not a system stability issue from that.

Can anyone help me find some way of sensibly stopping this from happening any more or, failing that, something I can do to return my windows to full brightness.


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The fading is done by the Fading Windows compiz plugin. For me I could re-color the windows that became stuck faded (or greyscale) by disabling the plugin.

I unchecked the Enable Fading Windows box and pressed back. Once the windows where fixed I went back and re-enabled this plugin.

screenshot of how to dissable Fading Windows

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