Has anyone encountered this symbol?

This symbol flashes intermittantly on my macbook pro screen from time to time (some weeks nothing, other days a few times a day). Seems like when I'm running multiple apps at the same time ie: creative suite photoshop, illustrator,& dreamweaver along with a handful of browsers. I've been using mac's since 1986 and never seen this image on my screen before. I have a hard time repeating the series of actions to duplicate, I've run activity monitor to see if there's a correlation with particular apps I'm running simultaneously with no conclusion. I've added more RAM thinking that might solve the issue.
I've taken this to the apple store and mac mechanic in santa barbara and none of the techs can diagnose. Anybody online see this image before? The closest I can describe it is as a compass arrow. See attached image.

Please help solve the mystery!

Whatever the issue is...adding ram won't solve it!

I'm 99% positive it's something software related...but given the myriad of software programs & utilities out there...it's totally impossible to know which one is causing the problem.

Does this happen when you reboot the computer (but haven't launched any applications)?

- if yes...then you probably installed some sort of utility or app. that "auto-launches" during startup. Go to "Activity Monitor" (inside the Utilities Folder)...look down the list...and see if you can spot the name of the program that's running.

- if no...and the symbol only appears after you start launching apps....then one of the apps. is the problem. Got to launch one app. at a time to figure out the problem app.

HTH,

- Nick

ctrl click ?

Can you ctrl click on the icon to get information ?

Take a screenshot of the image against a blank background, then go to Tineye reverse image search, upload your image and it will find other instances out there, which should tell you what it's related to.

northrnchimp said:

Take a screenshot of the image against a blank background, then go to Tineye reverse image search, upload your image and it will find other instances out there, which should tell you what it's related to.

Click to expand...

Great suggestion. I love TinEye and use it everyday.

It definitely looks like a compass rose - you must have some application installed that's causing that. Recommend you take a shot of Activity Monitor and post it here for us to see. Is it related to this? http://forums.adobe.com/thread/375164