White staticy box in top left of screen

Every so often, I get a white box that is staticy in the top left of my screen. It always is on top of other screens, but does nothing to the computer.

It is a 17" Laptop. 1440x900.
Gateway MX8734
Ubuntu 9.10 (soon to be 10.04, in the process of upgrading)

Specs:
Chipset: Intel® 943GM
Processor: Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Mobile processor T2060
1GB RAM
GPU: Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950

This was also happening on Windows Vista and XP while I had them. It doesn't affect the computer in any way. It is just annoying. What can I do? I do not use an external monitor at all.

Sounds like a GPU issue. Normally I'd recommend that you swap it out, but I can't find any word on whether or not the GPU is replaceable in this laptop.

I noticed it does it most of the time during the boot, and rarely during actual use? Print-Screen doesn't capture it though

Can you take a picture of it using a cell phone camera?

I am sure I am seeing the same thing after booting and while Firefox is loading. Though, once Firefox is loaded I no
longer see the square of desktop image. It only appears for a second or two.
Back in April when I first installed 10.4 I looked on the web for info on the strange space. Others were reporting it
and I never saw a fix for it. Haven't tried to find one since as I only see it for a brief time during each session.
Never happened on other distros....just 10.4.

EDIT:
I did find one mention of something similar. The fix was to disable all Firefox addons and then restart Firefox.
If the empty square goes away, then add back one addon at a time to find the one causing the problem.

That didn't work for me but it did for others.

Also, you said "staticy" which I assume means moving or appearing at different times. That isn't the case with me.

Edited by buddy215, 28 August 2010 - 04:30 PM.