Apologies Dan ...
you're right of course ;)
personally I have stopped seeing the strange icon on my own pc but posted to help fill in some details of who, when and where the icon is seen. I think it's been established at least that Vista users only have this weird icon as xp users have not reported it (not yet anyway).
**It has been mentioned that windows aero could be related to this but I can't test that as the icon doesn't appear for me now anyway ??
have others looked into this ?
Liverbird
For what it's worth I've been struggling with ALL the issues raised in this thread, namely:
I get the wierd icon
I sometimes fail to get the task tray icon for N360 (V2)
Boot-up has been appalingly slow (over 10 times longer after N360 v2 install) with LOTS of disk access during boot.
I don't recall seeing any of these problems with N360 V2 prior to the installation of Vista SP1 (though I could be mistaken). I certainly did see the above issues after installing Vista SP1 when N360 v2 was already installed. So, I decided to investigate a little. I did a complete new installation of Vista and applied all updates up to and including SP1 (and the 4 updates after it). Then I installed N360 V2. Since then I still get the wierd icon (no ideas why) but boot up time is only marginally longer than before N360 install (and close to "normal") and so far I've not had the missing tray icon problem.
BTW before the reinstall of Vista I tried all the "solutions" suggested elsewhere on this site and none of them worked.
I reckon the slow boot issue and (possibly) the missing tray icon issue are related to SP1 install on top of N360 V2. Installing N360 V2 on top of Vista SP1 seems to avoid these issues. I realise that not everyone can go back to "square one" but I thought sharing my experiences might help others?
BTW. I'm running Vista Home Premium on a Compaq V6000 laptop
Regards........Tony C
Have you seen Matt B's two messages about this?
Yes I have seen them thanks, but as I said the solutions there didn’t work for me.
I recently installed Norton 360 v2 ontop of a Vista Home Premium 64bit SP1 OS. Since then I have gotten this weird icon sometimes too, thought few and far between. However the most recent time it came up I managed to drag it out to the middle of the screen. Then I clicked it and a new window opened saying "Do you wish to be reminded about this threat anymore", it probably wasn't word for word that but some thing similar. In that new windows was also a checkbox. I didn't manage to get a screenshot because after clicking the "X" on the new window both things went away. However in paint I drew the icon and attack the picture below so that you could get a rough idea of what the icon looks like because when you drag it out from the corner more of it is visible.
The rectangular portion of it was translucent suggesting that this is a window (Aero) that possible was coded with a size of 0,0 and position 0,0 putting it in the corner. That would also explain the Norton symbol hanging off it cause when windows are too small to put the icon in the title bar they hang it off the side.
Anyway, just thought this information might help in solving this problem, if I get the icon again I'll make sure to take a screenshot off it in the center off the screen so it's all visible.
Hi Bickelk 
If you check out my link there is a pic of the icon posted, also check page 2 for how the image is as you described when dragged out.
Has anyone tried clicking on the icon? I forgot what the message I recieved after clicking on it said...it could have been any of the following. Forgive my poor memory. Most likely this message:
Hi Matt, & others...
My original post on this 'irritation' is here:
http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=Norton_360&thread.id=6061
I just finished playing Fallout 3 for a number of hours straight. I finished up for the evening and on the Desktop noticed the Circle-N icon but this time it isn't as far onto the screen. I cannot interact with it at all and has been frozen in position of over half an hour. No amount of clicking left or right or draging or mousing over will make it go away. No hd activity nor N360 or Ghost activity will affect it.
The Tray says "Norton 360 is protecting you" so I 'assume' it is working fine.
Matt... You said in an earlier post that N360 cannot do its automatic doings when the machine is turned off and obviously I would agree. BUT... You need to give us choices on this because I DON'T leave the machine on 24/7 just for Norton 360 to do its things.
Furthermore and even more important to me when I am playing a game that does not require Internet connectivity I disable the Internet wireless connection (Fn-F11). I would like to disable N360 and Ghost too since during this very intense CPU time I don't need either Norton 360 or Ghost going off doing something.
Is there _ANY_ easy way to deactivate Norton 360 and Ghost? Please...
No doubt it will disappear as soon as I reboot. Matt, I would like this problem elevated and resolved asap. It isn't enough to say it is harmless. If nothing else it is sloppy programing and irritating.
Regarding disabling Norton 360 and Ghost... Should I go into MSConfig and do it there? I notice that neither program uses Vista's Windows Defender? Isn't that a shame?
Thank you. I hope these problems/suggestions will be looked into and resolved. Do the best you can please.
I guess you are using Windows Vista, is that correct?
I do not have an answer, but perhaps tomorrow others can explain this. If you are more desparate you might want to check out Tweakui , which generally allows one to see and turn on/off desktop icons that cannot normally (or easily) be otherwise disabled.
I believe there is now a vista version or otherwise others like tweakvi. Sorry, I am not at a vista machine now and cannot recall the icon