Some HP Windows PC users have been tearing their hair out lately trying to figure out why a gray box appears on the screen as soon as Capslock or Numlock is turned on or off – prompting Reddit threads, questions in HP’s help forums and Youtube guides. Contrary to what HP intended, a reminder in the middle of the screen every time you activate caps is obviously not something that everyone appreciates.
Easy to deactivate
For those who don’t want the icons to appear on the screen, getting rid of them is fortunately child’s play – just disable all HP-related programs from auto-starting at login and the problem is solved. Those who want to go a step further and erase more traces of HP from their computer can also uninstall the HP System Event Utility software.
HP’s proprietary software can be easily disabled from booting. Image source: Windowslatest
The explanation for the new symbols is that HP released an update to the HP System Event Utility on April 25. Windowslatest writes that the software was automatically installed on one of their computers through HP Support Assistant, so it is perhaps not so strange that the boxes that suddenly started popping up are puzzling. Some probably thought it had to do with a recently updated version of Windows, but Microsoft is thus innocent this time.
