What is this strange box on my desktop?

February 3, 2009 9:37 AM

What is this strange box that won't go away on my desktop?

This is my work laptop, a Dell Latitude D630 running XP pro. My current setup is as follows:

-Laptop is docked to the left of my monitor and I use the laptop as my secondary monitor. The other day, this strange box was stuck on the desktop of the laptop and will not go away. I've tried doing the right click -> refresh to no avail. I've rebooted, shut down, logged out...nothing. When I un-dock it does disappear.

I'm running Display Fusion, an app that lets me better manage my monitors and wallpapers on them. Other than that, all software is pretty standard.

I thought before I bothered the IT guy with something this trivial I'd ask the hive.

posted by DrDreidel to computers & internet (5 comments total)

What happens when you end the Explorer process? (Ctrl + Alt + Delete, Start Task Manager, Processes Tab, right click on explorer.exe, end process.) (To restart, click the Applications tab, click new, type "explorer" and hit run.)

End the wallpaper managing process as well.

Are you running Active Desktop? This is known for leaving weird artifacts.

Also, since that's an IE "image not found" graphic, see if there's an errant IE process, though, to be fair, Active Desktop uses IE, so it would generate the same thing.

If your Display Fusion software makes use of Active Desktop, it could easily be triggering an object that persists like that. Usually with AD, you can mouseover the offending item and close it directly, but that might not be the case here.

I'm guessing it has to do with your desktop management software. REinstall that while docked and see if it persists.
posted by disillusioned at 9:43 AM on February 3

Looks like an active desktop module thingy. Here's how to disable.
posted by nitsuj at 9:44 AM on February 3

Also looks like an Active Desktop thing to me. But, yeah, you might disable Display Fusion and see if that fixes the problem.
posted by box at 9:48 AM on February 3

You might also check to see if somebody has altered your wallpaper to include that, as subtle stuff like that is a common office prank.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:03 AM on February 3

Active desktop was the culprit! Thanks everyone.
posted by DrDreidel at 10:09 AM on February 3