Mysterious black box

my wifes 15in macbook pro running 10.4.8 is displaying a mysterious black box around the selected icon on the desktop. this box transfers to any window i open and is usually around a button, or field window. also, the menu when i click on the apple in the top left, has two options to "force quit" and "force quit finder". two options to restart, two options to shut down, and two options to log out. i have never seen this before. any idea what is going on? she said she didnt change anything in the prefs...

well, i trashed all the prefs. seems to have taken care of it. now i have to start all over with prefs....

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