Hello,
When I try to start octave and it doesn't work. An active window is shown on my taskbar, but nothing happens when I click on it and when I hover my mouse over the taskbar it shows a preview of just a blank white box. Why could this be happening? I've already
uninstalled and reinstalled.
What operating system and version of Octave? Is this the first time you've tried to use Octave? Has it worked in the past and this is a new issue?
I've had similar sounding issues, using Octave 5.1.0 on Windows 10. Here are the details in case your issue is the same:
I use a laptop with a docking station connected to multiple monitors. on several occasions, I've used the laptop away from the docking station, and opening Octave would produce results similar to what you describe. The taskbar would show an Octave icon, hovering would show a thumbnail of a blank white window. The situation seemed to be related to Octave thinking the window location is somewhere 'that didn't exist', maybe a monitor that wasn't connected. In past Octave versions I could use the Windows 'snap' commands (Windows key plus Right or Left arrows) to move jump the window back to my active screen. That wasn't working this time.
I was, however, able to hover he mouse over the taskbar to get the popup preview thumbnail, right click _on the preview_ to get the same menu you get by clicking the upper right icon in most windows (Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize, Close). I cannot at the moment remember which option worked to bring the window back to the active screen, but it was either clicking 'Move' followed by holding down one of the left or right arrow keys until it appeared, or maximize, causing it to jump onto the screen.
I haven't been able to recreate the situation (going on and off docking station with different window positions, etc.). If it turns out this is the same situation you are having it would be informative to have more details so we might be able to put together a useful bug report related to GUI window position history. I don't know where Octave stores that info, I'm a bit surprised an uninstall/reinstall didn't fix it if this is indeed the issue.