Solved Spurious black rectangle appears on screen

[cliftonvilla]

A black rectangle about 2cm high by 1cm width has appeared at the top left of the screen, looks like a timer of some sort as when clicked it shows in the centre of the rectangle a very quick countdown from 100 to zero. There's a cross at the bottom of the rectangle. It's a nuisance and does not disappear when Surface is closed down and rebooted. Gets in the way of all programs. How to get rid of this?​

 

[ScottyS]

Sounds like you might have inadvertently downloaded malware.
Do you have Desktop Gadgets? They have countdown timers.
Check Task Manager and see if there is a process running that looks suspicious.
A list of Windows Processes that are supposed to be running can be found here.
Posting a screen shot of it may help identify it.

 

[cliftonvilla]

Thank you ScottyS. I have now run all the virus and threat programs manually and between them the rectangle has disappeared. Not sure why these programs don't always run in the background but hey...