Odd dialog box popping up and then disappearing within a fraction of a sec

[Mactabulous]

I have this weird thing happening every now and then. A dialog box pops up, and then disappears within the blink of an eye. It happens so quickly that all I'm able to discern is what looks to be the yellow icon with an exclamation mark in it. It's obviously some kind of error or warning. It happens at random, perhaps two, three times a day, and I have no way of knowing when it occurs. What information it conveys, is a mystery, due to its hyperdrive speed.

I have no idea what it is and it's starting to annoy me. I've tried looking in Console, but I have no idea what to look for.

Can anyone help shed some light?

 

[justperry]

No, not without a screenshot.

The only thing you can do is to record the screen and hope it will occur during recording, then rewind and stop at the frame with the dialogue box.

 

[Mactabulous]

Thanks, I'm doing screen recordings at random, in hope of capturing it. However, the behaviour in and of itself is interesting. Why would dialog boxes appear in that fasion in the first place?

Would love to hear from anyone with similar/identical experiences.

 

[jk111]

I had this same problem. It was caused by Facebook video chat plugin. So if you have that installed, it may be causing the dialog boxes.

 

[Peace]

It's the old java pop up bug. I've seen it before and I thought it was supposed to be fixed in 10.8.3

Here's a pic from my bug report. This is probably what you're seeing.

The pop up dialog appears for about 1/100th of a second.

 

[Mactabulous]

Thank you, Peace!

Java might be the culprit, then! I have yet to capture my error. By accident, however, I clicked question mark icon in the dialog box at the exact right time. This caused the Help viewer to pop up, and it is indeed a firewall request.

All the ways in which I hate Java could fill a library.

 

[canyonlight]

Same Problem Here

Experiencing the same problem here on early 2008 Mac Pro (3,1) with OS X 10.8.3. The only way I can get it to stop is to turn off the firewall in Systems Preferences.

Would appreciate any advice on exactly how to get the correct version of Java whatever installed and how to add that to firewall list so this nonsense would stop.

Apple has really left us out in the cold with this one.