"If Microsoft don't know about this, then they haven't used Windows. This happens every so often with me - and a lot of other users.
It imagine that it is either:
A fundamental bug in their windowing/graphics systems, too small to worry about, or it is caused by some third party program or driver
I personally think it is either option one or two, but the point is Microsoft haven't fixed it. You could try updating your graphics drivers or seeing if any patches have been issued on Windows Update, but I don't think it'll have much impact.
I'm not sure about the state of play on Vista or 7, as there was a major renovation of the windowing system, and Aero works differently.
Also, for me (XP Pro and part of a domain), bringing up the ""Windows Security"" dialog (Ctrl+Alt+Del) usually clears any floating things."
I've noticed this before once or twice on older NVIDIA graphics cards and in Virtual Machines. I do believe this to be a graphics card problem and it is extremely hard to replicate.
"Try turning down your Hardware Acceleration in the Display Properties Settings/Advanced. If that makes a difference, it's probably due to driver bugs.
In their quest to have the best benchmark times, the drivers are very aggressive at removing drawing requests that they think are redundant. Sometimes they get it wrong."
