Win 7 - Ghost Watermark Scrolling Marquee caught my eye

[DaveLembke]

Anyone know anything about Windows 7 scrolling hidden from view watermarks. I was working on my Windows 7 64-bit system working within MSPAINT to edit a screenshot that I was going to show a friend on a totally different subject and my left eye caught a strange ripple in the pixels in the top left corner of my display. I thought at first that I had an eye spasm or something which caused this effect, and went back to editing the screenshot to blank out some info, but then about 5 minutes later once again something was drawing my left eye to a oddity in pixels having a slight ripple.

I then stared at the screen and waited and saw text appear and as soon as it appeared it vanished but it was moving from right to left. Its not always showing the same ghost marquee. Sometimes it appears to state Windows ( something ) Home Premium below it and other times its scrolling Microsoft, and other times its scrolling something that I am unable to make sense out of. As quickly as it is seen it vanishes and its just barely visible. If it were a stationary watermark it probably wouldnt be visible, but because its scrolling from right to left its causing pixels on my old dell monitor to show a ripple with ghost text appearing and disappearing.

Here is another strange feature of this ghost in the machine watermark.... if you wait for it to appear and press the print screen key quickly to try to capture it, it doesnt seem to allow for it to be captured. It seems as though microsoft purposely made this watermark unable to be captured by a simple print screen.

I also tried to capture it using FRAPS and it also wont capture with that, so it protects itself from capture from that as well.

The only way I was able to capture this to show was to set my digital camera to near focus and then record a section of the display that I had seen the text scroll marquee past and film this from about 12 inches away from monitor. And then when I saw it I saw that the camera saw it too.

I then played back the video through quick start/pause over and over to catch the frame where the ghost text watermark appears and vanishes as its moving across the screen from right to left.

Attached is the frame that shows it most defined. I am also going to post the video on youtube if anyone wants to watch what its doing in real time.

I am curious as to first of all... why the hidden watermark like ghost text to scroll across the screen like this. i know that some video games out there have been using this hidden watermarking as a way to collect information from screenshots. The fact that MSPAINT doesnt seem to catch this with a Print Screen button keystroke to me is just very odd if its like the game companies that are looking for people to share information about their systems unknowingly when sharing screenshots that have hidden from normal view info, but yet with the right tool discloses quite a bit about the computer and location etc.



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[BC_Programmer]

Sounds like an issue with the LCD, possibly signal interference or another issue with the signalling.

I can't observe anything similar in a VM.

[DaveLembke]

Ok.... I finally found the cause of the strange scrolling watermarks.

BC you were right on the money with signal interference. It seems as though the KVM that I have was allowing for a signal from my one laptop that is connected to it to interfere with the display of the desktop computer. I thought the laptop was off, but it was quietly running, and it is Windows 7, so the display info was ghosting to the other video selection.

I double checked on this by booting the laptop to Linux Mint 17.1 off DVD-R and the Linux Mint Logo was on the screen. When going back to the Windows 7 system and watching on the screen for the scrolling of ghost images I saw the Linux Mint logo scrolling across the bottom portion of the display.

I shut down the laptop and the interference is gone.

Thanks for your assistance with this and I feel kind of embarrassed that I jumped to conclusions thinking it was something going on with that Windows 7 build that I never seen before. I guess reading about that one MS developer a few years ago who was able to slip code past the QC process was in the back of my mind when this started happening and I thought that maybe due to some odd reason my hardware combination was bringing to surface something hidden from most users view. 

This totally explains why FRAPS and Screenshots via Print Screen were not capturing this. 

Well at least if this happens to anyone else in the future, they will find a google hit for this now and know to check their KVM setup to make sure no other systems are running idle or on to interfere.