I am hoping to get some ideas on what to do to fix a small display issue.

I decided to take the plunge and upgrade Ubuntu 6.06 to 6.10 on my laptop. The machine is an old Dell Inspiron 7500 with an ATI Rage Pro video card.

After the upgrade, when the system boots into Gnome, there is a small 1/2" x 1/2" square of black lines in the top left corner (where the Ubuntu symbol and Applications menu reside). It does not show in screenshots. It goes away once I open a terminal window. If the screen goes blank when inactive, the square disappears when the screen is re-activated. This problem did not exist under 6.06.

I re-configured the xorg.conf file, to no effect. I am using the standard ati driver, not the proprietary one.

Any ideas?

when the square disappears after running terminal is the ubuntu logo visible?

regardless, it sounds like the image for the logo itself is corrupted. I would recommend trying to get a new copy and replacing the original one on your harddrive.

Try System-> Preferences-> Theme-> Theme Details button-> Icon tab. Try selecting a different icon theme.

Thanks for the suggestion. To answer the question, the Ubuntu logo is displayed properly when the square disappears.

I am working on replacing that logo, anyway. Just to be sure. However, googling tells me to find the logo in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/distributor-logo.png. I have replaced it with an image of the Linux penguin and nothing happens. Killall gnome-panel brings back the Ubuntu logo. I replaced it with the Apple logo and it will not display, either.

Am I looking in the wrong place?

fragos, changing icon themes does not help. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Thats correct for the standard look.

if you have everything set up as a single menu bar, i.e. not the standard Gnome menu system with apps, places, System as a separate entry, but all three under the standard menu bar look like windows has.
do the following.

First, open Configuration Editor (applications>System tools>configuration editor).
Then browse to apps/panel/objects and click on menu_bar_screen0.

Now, on the line 'custom_icon' double click under value and write the path to the image you want to use. then scroll down a bit and mark 'use_custom_icon'

That's it.

Efwis,

Thanks for your reply. I have not changed the menus to mimic Windows. However, I decided to try your fix, anyway. Did not work.

I realized that I could take some photos of the problem with my digicam and maybe that would help. So, here they are:

Here is what the screen corner looks like after logging in:
www.flickr.com/photos/37286235@N00/338039352/

Here is what the screen corner looks like with the menu up:
www.flickr.com/photos/37286235@N00/338039355/

Here is the screen after the problem miraculously resolves itself:
www.flickr.com/photos/37286235@N00/338039358/

Edit - 2007-01-29
I have taken the photos down. Thanks for everyone's help.
Thanks.

Now that I can see it this doesn't look like a corrupted icon. Notice in your second example that the real icon is an overlay and not distorted. I would look for a rouge process that's running in the background. I've never seen anything like this myself.

Thanks, fragos. And just when I finally got that darned icon changed, too! Since I am not using the standard Human icon theme, I had to change the start-here.svg file in /usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/places. Oi!

You are correct, the changed icon did not help.

Rogue process, eh? Time for some more research!

Thanks.

System-> Preferences-> Sessions-> "Startup Programs" tab is one place to look. These are the processes Gnome starts for your user. System-> Administration-> "System Monitor"-> Processes tab will show you all processes. The View drop down menu lets you select between active, all and my processes. The dependencies check box in that drop down may also be useful.

Thank you, fragos. I will play around with the processes.

Ti1ion,
I had the same problem with on board ATI 3D RAGE IIC AGP graphic card.
Changing default color depth to 16bit instead of 24bit in /etc/X11/xorg.conf fixed the problem.

Thought I would provide a bit of an update. The problem has not been resolved, yet. But, I have a little more information.

I did try changing the color depth to 16 bits and that did not help.

Changing the video driver to VESA removed the square, but the driver is so painfully slow I can't use it. I installed XDM for a different reason and the block no longer showed up! But, XDM is useless without a shutdown button so I removed it. Not using a login manager and starting X from the shell gives no square on the screen. After a little digging I found that Edgy uses a new file to configure CTRL+ALT+DELETE (/etc/event.d/control-alt-delete), so I made it shutdown the system. I now log into the shell and startx. That avoids the square.

I would still like to get rid of the problem when using GDM/KDM.

Thanks.