I just rebooted my computer and once it started loading there was a big red circle that said " Hi." Didn’t stay there long enough for me to get a screen shot. It had never shown up before. Now I’m wondering where it came from.
Anyone else seen this?
Any replies would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Hi -midnight,
Wasn’t that Hinomaru, the flag of Japan? ;D
Again then we have to explain that Hi away or was it a positive Hai 8)
polonus
probably Bill Gates saying hello. ;D
Hi polonus,
It wasn’t a flag and it wasn’t a Hai. Kind of eery though. :-\
@Pondus…Maybe so. 
Wasn’t it facebook’s red circle?
polonus
As far as I know Facebook doesn’t have a red circle. If it does, I’ve never seen it. This circle showed up at the bottom of my screen while my other start up programs were loading.
-midnight
Hi -midnight
Could it have been Opera’s red logo “O”?
Just for the heck of it, let’s reboot and see if it shows up again. If it does, then likely could be some sort of start-up process/program. Try rebooting again and see if it is consistent in displaying on start-up, after three or four reboots.
Not in the system tray, is it?
If it is a one-off thing, would not worry about it. Glitch/computer.
Hi Simion,
Not the Opera logo. It was solid red circle with “Hi” in white letters.
@mchain,
No, it wasn’t in the system tray. I rebooted twice last evening and it showed up both times but rebooted this morning and no “Hi.”
I know that, in the past, it appeared as if you were downloading and installing various programs quite often.
Could this be one of those instances?
Personally, I carefully vet all programs I’m considering before they get on my system, unless I’m told to download and run them here at this forum. Here, at least, I’m under the trusted guidance of whatever malware removal expert, so no worries there.
mchain
Haven’t downloaded any new programs.
Was it just a glitch?
It must have been a glitch because it only showed up twice and I’ve rebooted several times since.
Happens sometimes.
If your system is running normally, then nothing to worry about.
Free sandboxing program here for those instances when you are minding your own business, and a drive-by attack occurs when visiting a trusted site: http://www.sandboxie.com/
Happened here one time (once is enough) and avast!, in 20 seconds, blocked 576 attempts for the 3 Trojans trying to install, and the sandboxed browser was clean after the browser instance was closed and the sandbox emptied automatically on close. No changes to the system here or to the browser after the attack. No need to do a system restore, nothing happened.
Sandboxie is free and can be used to run other programs as well for protection against unwanted changes to your system. Internet clutter and accumulated garbage is reduced, for example, when sandbox is set to automatically delete on close. Helps keep the size of the hard drive from growing to larger sizes as the sandbox clutter never gets written to the hard drive but stays in the sandbox. When sandbox is deleted, all data inside the sandbox is tossed trivially as if it never was there in the first place.
It just showed up again. It showed the red circle with HI in white letters. I saved it to my pictures but doesn’t show red circle.
Image attached
I wish I knew what this was all about.
Which program are you using for your email ???
Windows Live Mail. When I did a screenshot it showed the red circle but when I saved it to my pictures it showed what I attached…
I just did. It showed the image I attached but I was unable to copy and paste it. Even though it did show the image it said 0 results found.
Simplest thing to do is to conduct a search of all .gif files on your computer. Use this for a search parameter: *.gif and right-click your found picture to select “more”. Select additional properties to display as needed. Where is the picture stored?
*.gif in search box