How do i get word completion to stay on?

Hi

I hope this is the correct forum for this post

basically i think word completion is a wonderful feature,
but it only sometimes happens on my computer, I am
running visual studio.net 2003 and basically when i type
in something like form1, word completion only comes on
after i type the dot and then it lets me choose the next
word, whilst typing the form1 part nothing happens, if i
click the complete word button it gives form as a option,
and i think is wonderful as it would save so much time,
so is there a way to make it default to showing the
complete word?

also another question, not worth starting a whole post
for, basically in my project i have a string, and i need
to reuse it, but i cant as it says something like the
string has already beenused, so I was wondering how to
clear a string.

Thanks

William Hilsum