Gray square overlaps top-left corner when opening an Mplayer+FireFox3 stream in Toma Internet TV

[Aswarp]

System: KUbuntu 8.04.1 (KDE4) with all updates as of today, Nvidia GeForce 6600 video card with latest propietary drivers.
Gray square overlaps top-left corner when opening an Mplayer+FireFox3 stream in Toma Internet TV.

That's it: when I try to run a video stream from the internet television website "Toma Internet tv" (and other websites which broadcast video) I don't get the stream loading at the embedded MPlayer window though the corresponding firefox pop-up window container opens up.
Instead, I get a strange grayed square area which occupies a large portion of the top left corner of the screen. This square can't be closed or removed even when I close Firefox and kill -9 both firefox and mplayer. I get rid of it only by logging out of the session and then logging in again.
By the way, the problem does not happen on the first account I created on KUbuntu, but only on the second and the third user accounts I created. If I was to create a fourth account right now, I am pretty sure that it would show the same wrong behaviour.

[Aswarp (aswarp2002)]

I observed screen corruption as well on the left mouse button contextual menues. This may be related to that plugin which makes menues and screen-tooltips look as exploding when closed.
Corruption stays for a fraction of a second, and then the correct pixels are drawn.

[James Collier (james-collier412)]

Are either of you using a flash plugin?
What about compiz?
kernel version? "uname-r" "lsb_release"

[Aswarp (aswarp2002)]

I am afraid either of us are the same person... sorry
Kernel version is 2.6.24-19-generic, and no LSB modules are available. Compiz is installed and running.
OpenOffice is not; I tell this because there is a bug already opened also reporting screen corruption when OO is running.
Regards,

[James Collier (james-collier412)]

No problem at all, thank _you_ for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.
Does it still happen when you turn off visual effects in System > Preferences > Appearance ?

[Aswarp (aswarp2002)]

Let me see... I can't find that "System Settings/General/Look and feel/Appearence" menu, remeber however this is KDE and maybe your are talking about Ubuntu on Gnome.
Under System Settings/General/Appearence are many, many options which don't seem to be related, nor I do think they are causing the troubling here (Widget style is Oxygen, by the way).
But... under "System Settings/General/Look and feel/Desktop/Desktop Effects" is the plugin I signaled before (good shot!).
I disable "All desktop effects", Apply, and...
bingo! Now I can watch video streams without the gray squared area appearing in front of everything (however with effects turned-off, obviously).
The effects I had active were:
-Zoom
-Logout
-Present Windows
-Dialog parent
-Login
-Minimize animation
-Shadow Translucency
-Fade
-Box switch
-Desktop grid
-Taskbar thumbnails
...and the rest were inactive.

There is yet another observed behaviour which may be realted: when I switch user X sessions and go back to the one that raised the gray square, I can't get to see the login popup. It is there, however it does not show (screen is all black). Sometimes the user/password fields blink there for half a second, then they go away. The login popup is there but no key I press gets to show it.
Typing some arrow keys and my password blindly I could fortunately log in (I had some work ongoing on that session and restarting kdm was just not acceptable). Login fields look good when I try to switch to other user X sessions without the problem.

[Aswarp (aswarp2002)]

Oh, excuses: Compiz is not running (I think). I don't get the wobbly effect or any other so I think that means it is turned off. I remember trying to activate it but giving up because it wouldn't. However, Compiz is running well in my main user account, curiously the one who has no problems such as these.

[James Collier (james-collier412)]

Ah sorry, I overlooked the fact you're running KDE4!
KDE4 has it's own compositor.
Assigning to kde4base
I don't know how to help you any further. I'd recommend having a look around google and asking on the forums at http://ubuntuforums.org/

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

The best course of action would be to report this bug upstream at http://bugs.kde.org, then link the bug report here. Thanks.

[Aswarp (aswarp2002)]

Any volunteer to do so, who knows where to post the bug at?
Thank you :)

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Is this still a problem in Kubuntu 9.04?

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!