smiley in corner of screen while booting

[runsetuid.root]

I just recently noticed something interesting that happens upon booting my laptop. I have been searching for someone who has heard of it before, but to no avail. Check this out:

I have an HP Pavilion z5200
AMD Athlon XP 3400+
1 gb RAM
I have 2 Operating Systems:
    XP Pro (came with comp)
    Suse Linux 9.0 (installed about 8 months ago)
I took out the Windows XP bootskin by editing the boot.ini file as follows:
      

Code: [Select]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noguiboot /NoExecute=OptOutby adding the "/noguiboot"

So on to the interesting item I discovered.When I boot into Windows inbetween where the Windows XP bootscreen should be and where the HP screen appear I have just a black screen. About 100 miliseconds before the HP screen appears I get this little image of a blue smiley face. square, not circular. It has a 'v' for a mouth as well. I highly doubt this is Microshizzles way of teasing you for not displaying there logo upon booting.
Any ideas?

[Rob Pomeroy]

Certain text-mode console fonts include amongst their character sets a smiley-face like character.  I'd hazard a guess that's what's being displayed.  As to why?  I have absolutely no idea.  Given that it only displays for a tenth of a second under fairly rare conditions, you may well have been one of the first people to spot this.  Congratulations.  

[runsetuid.root]

maybe I'm just a tech geek, perhaps it's embedded in my personality to always find an anwser to things or how they work, but I'm going to Best Buy today to boot some HP laptops.

weird....

[GX1_Man]

Let us know. I am curious.