Moving Window Bug

The moving window bug in Windows 98

Early versions of Windows Minesweeper gradually moved the game off the screen.

The moving window bug exists for the Windows 95, 98 and ME versions of Minesweeper. When you change difficulty level the game moves one pixel higher up the screen. Once the menu has moved off the screen you can no longer change settings.

You should obviously move the window with your mouse before it moves off the screen! However, the author of this article recalls helping his cousin and several friends recover Minesweeper on their computers. One solution was to close Minesweeper, locate Winmine.ini and edit the Ypos variable to make Minesweeper open in a new location. A second solution was to change the screen resolution which often moved the game. A third solution was to press the [ALT] key to select the game menu, press the left arrow to open the window menu, press the down arrow and hit [Enter] to select "Move" then use the direction arrows to move the window.

The one click bug was eventually fixed with the release of Windows 2000.


Pictures
Moving window bug on Windows 98
Moving window bug on Windows ME

Article created 28 October 2020 by Damien Moore and updated 5 August 2021.