Annoying black transparent rectangle

[Nicoya]

As of yesterday I have gotten an annoying black rectangle in the upper right of my desktop. I restarted and it went away but after a few more uses of my mac it came back on another restart. I haven't installed anything recently so I have no idea how it got there. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mrplow]

With it's round corners it looks like it could be a widget.....

maybe have a look in dashboard and see if anything looks similar - maybe you have an errant 3rd party widget

mrplow

 

[MacHeadCase]

Yep. Looks like widgets that don't load entirely or properly. Like if they weren't compatible or waiting on an internet connection that doesn't complete.

 

[Nicoya]

Thanks for your replies, however none of the widgets I seldom use have that size and shape or are at that position. I also only use 1 3rd party widget (istat pro) and I installed that a month ago and no problems arose until 2 days ago. Right now I don't have that black rectangle, so far its only appeared on 3 occasions. I also don't have any extra login items as well. I'll keep trying to figure it out, thanks.

 

[Chimpur]

Do you have growl installed? It kind of looks like a growl popup.... try seeing if unistalling and reinstalling growl helps!

 

[Nicoya]

No I don't have that installed. Don't even know what it is but I know I didn't install anything named growl. Thanks though.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Yeah... it's pretty obvious you have some sort of buggy app. Try creating a new user and see if the problem occurs on that user.

If the problem does NOT recur, then on your regular user, go to:
System Preferences > Accounts > your user account
Make a list of your login items, then remove them all. Restart and see if the problem goes away. If it does, then one of the items you removed is the culprit. If not, we can try other things.

 

[Nicoya]

I think I figured it out but it might take a few restarts to verify. Might be a utility called winswitch. Had that installed since February but only recently has it given me this problem (if it is indeed winswitch)