As shown in the screenshot, there were no active apps visible in the taskbar, yet this white box kept appearing on my screen. The box couldn’t be minimized, removed, or dragged. I tried using Process Explorer with the drag-and-drop search feature to identify the responsible process, but it didn’t work—instead, it just highlight Windows Explorer.
I’m not sure why Process Explorer couldn’t detect it, but even disabling startup apps didn’t stop the white box from appearing on my desktop. It showed up in different locations on the screen and even across new virtual desktops.
When I clicked the “Show Desktop” button on the right corner of the taskbar, the box would disappear. However, the moment I opened any application, it would reappear.
I searched online for solutions, like Safe Boot, antivirus scans, and other suggestions, but nothing worked.
The only temporary workaround I found was using the “Show Desktop” button on the right corner of the taskbar to hide it.
Finally, I opened Task Manager and began closing applications and killing processes one by one, waiting 3-4 seconds after each attempt to see if the white box would disappear. In the end, I found that a Brave Browser process was using around 200MB of memory. Once I killed the Brave process, the white box disappeared.
In Windows, there’s a feature where if you resize a window, it will reopen in the same size and position. So, before and after killing the Brave process, I reopened Brave, and it launched exactly in the area where the white box was, confirming that the issue was related to Brave. Also, the 200MB Brave process I found was running even when my taskbar was empty, further indicating it was the cause.
Also my background apps setting is disabled
