Mystery Pop-up Window

Question

Roughly once every day or two, a pop-up window appears on my computer. It disappears in a tiny fraction of a second, impossible to discern where it is coming from.

Any suggestions about how to catch which program it might belong to?

• A process monitor might catch it, but only if it is not from an existing application.
• Closing programs one at a time and waiting two days to see if it doesn't happen (or if I don't notice), is... impractical.

An application which could log all windows and associated processes would probably detect it. I don't know of such an app.

I'm suspecting this is some status dialog from some program like MS Outlook, ATI drivers or Epson multifunction spam. The machine is well patched and been thoroughly scanned by multiple AVs, so I'm reasonably certain it is not any form of malware.

Answer 1

I'm thinking of a number of ways in which you may possibly achieve this.

One way is to run a screen capture utility. When the event occurs you basically stop recording the screen then play it back in slow motion to see just exactly what it was you were dealing with.

Another way is using Powershell. Basically, run 'get-process' regularly and periodically and log it to a file. The program that isn't there normally is the one that obviously sticks out.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-cool-things-you-can-do-with-windows-powershell/

If it's a status dialog than it's likely to be something on your taskbar... You could try the process of elimination if you are confident that your computer is 'safe' from a security process as well.