Pulldown Menus Misaligned

[Guest]

Greetings, All,

I am having a problem with my pulldown menus, and the nature of the problem
seems to make it impossible to search online or in any knowledgebases.

Normally, when you click on a pulldown menu, the left side of the menu is
flush left and aligned with the first letter of the menu header. However, at
some point, my system changed and now when I click on the header, the right
side of the menu is flush right and aligned with the last letter of the
header.

I couldn't find a setting to do that in the Control Panel. Now, I did
install new drivers for my wacom table and a webcam, but I uninstalled them
and the problem remains (I have since reinstalled these drivers). It could be
that this happened before installing them and I just didn't notice because
menus are less prevalent in the OS and in Office 2007 with the Ribbon Bar.

To complicate matters, the menus are messed up in Outlook 2007 and Acrobat
Professional 8, but they work fine in the Device Manager pulldown menus, and
in a book cataloging program I use. The menus fail too in an old 16-bit word
processor I still use.

Oh, and when I went to uninstall the drivers in the Control Panel, I noticed
that my Office icons had been partially replaced: Instead of the colored
squares icon, some of them are now the Microsoft Office Picture Manager! How
the heck did that happen? I can't even change the icons back as far as I can
tell. Help with this would be appreciated too! If it helps, it's only the
"Get Started Tab" icons that were replaced. This appears only in Uninstall
section of the Control panel as far as I can tell.

I have no idea what's going on, and I hope someone here will recognize the
problem and point me to a solution. My system still works, but this is
driving me mad!

I have Vista Ultimate running on P4, 3.4GHz, with 2GB of RAM.

Thank you for any ideas or help you can provide!

Regards,

Keith

 

[Dave Cox]

Greetings, All,

I am having a problem with my pulldown menus, and the nature of
the problem seems to make it impossible to search online or in any
knowledgebases.

Normally, when you click on a pulldown menu, the left side of the
menu is flush left and aligned with the first letter of the menu
header. However, at some point, my system changed and now when I
click on the header, the right side of the menu is flush right and
aligned with the last letter of the header.

I couldn't find a setting to do that in the Control Panel. Now, I
did install new drivers for my wacom table and a webcam, but I
uninstalled them and the problem remains (I have since reinstalled
these drivers). It could be that this happened before installing
them and I just didn't notice because menus are less prevalent in
the OS and in Office 2007 with the Ribbon Bar.

To complicate matters, the menus are messed up in Outlook 2007 and
Acrobat Professional 8, but they work fine in the Device Manager
pulldown menus, and in a book cataloging program I use. The menus
fail too in an old 16-bit word processor I still use.

Oh, and when I went to uninstall the drivers in the Control Panel,
I noticed that my Office icons had been partially replaced:
Instead of the colored squares icon, some of them are now the
Microsoft Office Picture Manager! How the heck did that happen? I
can't even change the icons back as far as I can tell. Help with
this would be appreciated too! If it helps, it's only the "Get
Started Tab" icons that were replaced. This appears only in
Uninstall section of the Control panel as far as I can tell.

I have no idea what's going on, and I hope someone here will
recognize the problem and point me to a solution. My system still
works, but this is driving me mad!

I have Vista Ultimate running on P4, 3.4GHz, with 2GB of RAM.

Thank you for any ideas or help you can provide!

Regards,

Keith

I haven't a clue.........but you might give changing to Windows
Classic pulldowns and Menus a try then changing back. Just to see
if it resets anything.

It probably wont make any difference, but hey! it can't hurt.

 

[Guest]

Dave,

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm sorry to report it did not help. Sigh....

Keith

 

[Guest]

In IE7, go to the tool bar >View>Encoding>Left-To-right document.
You will have the "black" dot beside "right-to-left".

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Mick,

But the black dot is next to "left-to-right."

Keith

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:14:02 -0700, sylvaticus

Normally, when you click on a pulldown menu, the left side of the menu is
flush left and aligned with the first letter of the menu header. However, at
some point, my system changed and now when I click on the header, the right
side of the menu is flush right and aligned with the last letter of the
header.

How strange! Maybe a regional "right-to-left text flow" setting?

I've seen this happen with Notepad for some reason, but never had to
tshoot it as closing and restarting Notrepad (or Windows) fixed it.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, that was my first thought: that some setting was switched. I checked
those regional settings, and I can't find any that would create this
situation.

I wish I could figure this out!! (And I wish I were on a ten-year lunch
break!)

Keith

 

[Dave Cox]

Yeah, that was my first thought: that some setting was switched. I
checked those regional settings, and I can't find any that would
create this situation.

I wish I could figure this out!! (And I wish I were on a ten-year
lunch break!)

Keith

Would it be possible to do a screen capture and post it? It might
jar something loose for us.

Also does it do it in every Menu drop down system wide or just a
select few?

Dave

 

[Guest]

I'm uncertain how to add a screenshot to this post. I mentioned a couple apps
in my original post where it's working and where it's not. If someone could
explain how to add the screen shots, I'll try to include them; visual is
usually easier! Thanks!

Keith

 

[sylvaticus]

HOLY CR@P!!!! That did it!!!! I have been living with this irritation for
months, and the fix was that simple, and as you say: that COUNTER-INTUITIVE!

I switched it and all my menus are working again. Outlook didn't at first,
so I had a fleeting instant flash of panic, but shut it down and relaunched
it, and it too is behaving.

THANK YOU!!!!

I was as perplexed as you, but when I think about it, if my hand is ON the
screen, and I click on the menu, it would appear UNDER my hand. So, perhaps
it actually is more intuitive than I think, but it's very poorly explained.
MS should reword that dialog box, perhaps even giving a quick video or at
least show a picture of a hand on a screen holding a stylus with the menu
under the hand or to the left of the hand. I hope they read this suggestion.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

Best regards,
Keith

 

[sylvaticus]

I almost did too. About the only thing that helped me get through it was that
a lot of what I did used buttons instead of menus. Still, I was ready to
start from scratch because I feared something deep and system had gone wrong.
Again, my total thanks!!

Keith

 

[sandpuppeteer]

It worked for me, as well. Among the weird quirks of Vista, it's the most
frustrating I've encountered so far. The whole "tablet PC" thing has caused
me woes in the past, as well.

If anyone is looking at this stuff to actually document something like this
to make it easier for people to find, I performed different updates than what
sylvaticus reported. I had run a whole bunch of non-critical updates for
windows, which I had not installed at first when getting the computer a month
ago.

Thank you so much for providing this solution!