Something is hiding on my computer

June 27, 2007 9:33 AM

There's a 1 pixel square window in the upper left hand corner of my Windows XP computer that I just noticed. How do I figure out which process owns that window?

I have a small (1px wide and tall) white dot on my screen in the upper left. When I put my cursor over it, my Windows cursor changes from the pointer to something else (sometimes the wait cursor, sometimes the document edit caret).

I remember seeing Windows scripting software that would list all of the windows that were open so that you could select which of them to send events to. Is there a way to list all of the open GUI elements on the screen and the process that owns the GUI element? I'd like to know where this window is coming from.

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

Could be some spyware. Does it show up if you try using a different logon ID? If not, you can look at the processes tab of the task manager and compare open processes (look for ones running as that user name).
posted by Burhanistan at 9:38 AM on June 27, 2007

Winspector will do this for you.
posted by teleskiving at 9:39 AM on June 27, 2007

That's really weird! My first guess was it was just a stuck pixel but that doesn't explain the pointer changing... If it was spyware there is no reason it would need to display any pixel whatsoever. Try closing processes from the taskmanager one by one and see if it goes away.
posted by zeoslap at 9:39 AM on June 27, 2007

Thanks everyone! The culprit was the FoxyProxy plugin for Firefox. It opened a window that Winspector calls "XPCOM:EventWindow". Not sure what it's doing there, but it sure is interesting...
posted by yellowbkpk at 9:52 AM on June 27, 2007

For future reference, WinSpy++ can help with these too.
posted by JaredSeth at 10:17 AM on June 27, 2007