annoying desciption boxes

[leeshor]

It looked to me like the search provider was the problem from the start. It was just a matter of finding where. I think your problem is solved.

 

[golfsferr]

Unfortunately, no. I've noticed it on my laptop too. It's simply when I place the cursor on any link rather it be a picture, story, action, icon, app, so on, and a box appears with a description of what I'm placing the cursor on. It goes away on my laptop once I click on whatever the link is. On my surface it often does not go away and becomes annoying. I think it's a Microsoft issue and that my computers are virus, malware, and spyware free. I just can't find out what I need to disable/turn off in windows 8. I've googled this many times and found similar subjects that I have disabled hoping this would do it but no such luck.

 

[Johnny365]

Try using a public wifi location and see if it's any better.

 

[golfsferr]

I tried the hot spot on my phone and there was no difference. I'm not sure if this covers what you are suggesting.

Please forgive me if I keep harping on what these are but the nature of them simply being a box with a description of what ever I'm holding the cursor over just seems like come kind of redundancy similar to some features that helped the impaired. If I'm holding the cursor over a worded link, the information in the box is the exact same information only featured more prominently in a box. If I'm holding the cursor over a picture then the description in the box explains what the picture is about. I can see how all this could be helpful at times but when the don't go away of cover something else up that I'm trying to see, it get's annoying. I just can't help but feel that I'm not accurately describing what these are and once I do someone will know exactly what to do.

I think Leeshor suggested early on that my router could have been hijacked and maybe that's it, but in my feeble mind I'm having a hard time understanding the correlation. But I'll go back and look deeper into that too.

Thanks for all your help everyone.

 

[leeshor]

It's possible you have installed an otherwise innocent free program that happens to also come with ads. Some do. Somewhere there is a logical explanation.

 

[malberttoo]

If the same issue is happening on multiple devices, then yes it could be your router, your Internet provider etc. But if you say it's happening even on a device when you're on some other random WiFi or Internet like Starbuck's or the library or whatever, then it must be something that you install on your machines.

If you want to find out bad enough, then pick one of your devices, use Macrium and do an image (for data backup purposes) and then do a clean install of that device. Slowly start installing your normal programs until you start having the issue again.

It sounds drastic, but if you truly want the problem gone, then the clean install would have taken you far less time than all your troubleshooting efforts up til now.

Just my .02....

 

[sharpuser]

A question about the labels - do they float? Do they show up in different places of the images based upon your screen dimensions, etc.? Or do they scale with the images? Online images? Even the avatars on this page?

What I am getting at is, are your image files modified? If so, then it is likely that your stuff got modified all at once from one machine or in a singular event. Then your modified images may be shared on the cloud, like OneDrive or EverNote, or DropBox.

 

[GreyFox7]

Have you gotten these messages when you are at a different location (wifi at a restaurant for example)? If not your Router has likely been compromised. sorry if I missed where you tested via a different connection.

 

[leeshor]

I don't remember that you said what your current DNS IP is. Could you post it?

 

[agt499]

View attachment 6194
another example
and not syncing to icloud

Hi - just a radical thought having spotted this thread the other day - if you're finding this only on the web (as sharpcolorado queried), are we sure it isn't just the html title attribute appearing on hover, and perhaps not fading/dismissing as they should?
From that garage door screenshot, the description box looks pretty relevant to the content as you might expect from the page author, and if it were more nefarious/malware I would expect that it would try to redirect you rather than just giving a caption.
Would you be able to provide an address/URL for that screenshot?

Edit - I've looked at some of your other screenshots, especially the one with the comment 'I did click the story about the plane', and I'm growing confidence in my theory. The screenshots look like common titles of the "More Stories for around the web" variety showing up exactly as Internet Explorer would normally render them.
I think your problem may be more one of the boxes not going away, rather than being hijacked by something. If so it's still a problem, but a different and less dangerous one.