View Single Post
  #1  
Old October 2nd, 2009, 09:47 PM
Smiley14's Avatar
Smiley14 Smiley14 is offline
Senior Contributor
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: MN, USA
Posts: 2,424
Gray Box Filling up Screen

I'm suddenly having a weird issue that I can't seem to pinpoint a reason or cause. Just started yesterday and has happened several times since then. I'm in the habit of turning on my laptop when I get home from work around midnight and working with it until about 4am, and leaving it on overnight and then turn it off again the next day when I leave for work around 2pm. Yesterday morning, when I woke up and went to check email, there was this mysterious big gray box filling up 3/4 of the screen. Only the top 1/3 of the screen was visible and it was of my normal desktop. I could move my mouse around within that top 1/3 area, and could even move it around behind the box and open up the Start Programs menu, but as the box was not very see-thorugh, I couldn't see to do a shut-down. It can't be minimized and doesn't respond to anything or go away. I did a hard shut down on the laptop and when it was rebooted, it was gone, so I didn't think too much of it. Turned it off when I left for work and turned it on again last night when I got home. This time, it was there on the boot-up, even before Windows had loaded. So did another hard shut-off and tried again, and again, the gray box. Windows tried to do a start up repair from the hard shut-offs I was doing, so I let that run from what I could barely make out of it from behind the box, but after two hours, it didn't do anything, so I did another hard shut off and this time when it booted up, it was gone. I did a bunch of virus scans and stayed up most of the night playing with it and could find nothing, so I went to bed without a solution. Woke up this morning to find the gray box back. Did yet another hard shut-down and it was gone when it booted back up. Thought maybe it was with the screen saver since it seemed to appear after the screen saver goes on, so switched the screen saver and let it come on again, but the box still appeared. Another hard shut-down and turned off the screen saver and let it sit for a few hours. Didn't come back. Right before I left for work, I did a system restore to a week ago. I'm still at work now, so very curious to see if it comes back again or not. I am baffled. The only clue is that it seems to be possibly connected to the screen saver. I have not downloaded anything or been to any new or unusual sites or anything in the last few days and have not gotten any emails with attachments or the like, so I can't fathom how I could have gotten any kind of virus. And multiple scans from online scanners and in safe mode find nothing. I'm hoping the system restore does the trick, but was just curious if anyone has seen anything like this or has any ideas?? If it comes back in again, I'll have to take it into the repair store, but I really can't afford their starting price of $150 just to even look at it, let alone how much more they'll charge to fix it. This laptop is only four months old so is hopefully at least still under the basic warranty. I didn't buy the extended warranty on it. The basic warranty only covers hardware as far as I'm aware though.
__________________
No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does. --Christopher Morley

Last edited by Smiley14; October 2nd, 2009 at 09:51 PM.
Reply With Quote