Win2K Server: Lose Title Bar, Icons, start menu

[HammRadio]

Hi...

I have been having some weird things happen to my machine. I have
once re-formatted my drive and re-installed my operating system. I
was having problems before with the MMC, where snap-ins would fail to
initialize and I couldn't use the Computer Management console without
it crashing. The symptoms would be title bar would become transparent
and all open windows text would appear in the title bar, where the
text would become garbled.

The icons in the console (whether I'm in SQL Enterprise MGR or IIS)
would disappear. Text would remain. Drop downs would occassionally
not work. Some not all. Recently the start menu would expand folders
but you would not see the menu, then you would expand something to the
right (Right Arrow) and then you would see a menu. Some would expand,
some wouldn't.

The behavior is very weird. Most of the time this occurs when I have
VS .Net 2003 open. Occassionally when InterDev 6.0 is on.

I'd hate to re-format and re-install again. Any help???

The Machine is a Dell Latitude C810 P3
Windows 2000 Server

Primary Software used:
-- VS 6.0
-- VS .Net 2003
-- Office XP
-- SQL 2000

 

[George Hester]

I suspect Active Directory. What happens when you access that off Administrator tools in the Control Panel? Any errors?

 

[HammRadio]

I don't have that installed (since I don't see a short cut for it). I
have re-installed the Video Driver for the laptop that I pulled from
Dell's web-site. I noticed people mentioning that as a suspect in
other areas. So crosses fingers.

 

[HammRadio]

I have re-installed the Video Driver supplied by Dell for the C810
Latitude.

nVidia GeForce2 GO, v.44.82, A18

That hasn't helped.

I'm only considering video drivers because I have seen other title bar
problems caused by video drivers.

Most of the time the symptons occur when running Visual Studio 2003.
I will then see the problem in any MMC console like Enterprise Manager
or Computer Management. Nothing shows up in the Event Viewer...

Any thoughts would be great.

 

[George Hester]

Have you ever tried running the system without changing the video drivers that the install of Windows 2000 puts in by default? And still get the issue?

 

[HammRadio]

I have tried to uninstall the driver to revert to the default, but
when I restart it reverts back to the driver recommended by Dell. I
feel like this may be related to Visual Studio .Net 2003. I do not
have 2002 installed. But I'm thinking that there is a corrupt control
somewhere. For example, when I have the issues, I am usually
running/debugging/codding an app written in 2003. If I open Query
Analyzer, the drop down to change databases does not work.
Re-painting seems to be aproblem. And when I close out of VS 2003 the
"corrupt" Query Analyzer seems to be fine.

Is it possible, I need to have VS 2002 installed on this machine. Is
2003 not really a standalone IDE. Both frameworks (1.0 and 1.1) are
installed.

This just seems weird. I'm tempted to rebuild the machine again and
go to xp or server 2003, but the web server I support is 2000, which
is why I hesitate.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

mike

 

[Razvan Dragomirescu]

I have tried to uninstall the driver to revert to the default, but
when I restart it reverts back to the driver recommended by Dell. I
feel like this may be related to Visual Studio .Net 2003. I do not
have 2002 installed. But I'm thinking that there is a corrupt control
somewhere. For example, when I have the issues, I am usually
running/debugging/codding an app written in 2003. If I open Query
Analyzer, the drop down to change databases does not work.
Re-painting seems to be aproblem. And when I close out of VS 2003 the
"corrupt" Query Analyzer seems to be fine.

Is it possible, I need to have VS 2002 installed on this machine. Is
2003 not really a standalone IDE. Both frameworks (1.0 and 1.1) are
installed.

This just seems weird. I'm tempted to rebuild the machine again and
go to xp or server 2003, but the web server I support is 2000, which
is why I hesitate.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

mike

Did you ever find a solution for that problem? I'm seeing the same
thing... but not with Visual Studio (I don't have that installed). It
just happens with Outlook for instance (closing it and restarting
seems to fix the problem)... just really weird...

Razvan Dragomirescu
SIMEDA GmbH

 

[HammRadio]

I'm still having the same problem. It is happening with most all
applications. Especially with more than one application open.

I had MS Access, MS Excel and IE open at the same time.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to re-build the LapTop again.
Unfortunately that makes me unproductive for a couple of days.