Start menu and all menus disappearing, typed characters won't appe

[leahizhere]

Help, when I click on the start button on the task menu it pops up briefly
then disappears. So do ALL my menus, ie: right mouse click, any of the pull
down menus, file, edit, view, etc.

When I double click an icon it open the properties, I have to double click a
few times before it will open.

When typing, characters only appear if you hit the key right when the curser
blinks on.

My "my computer" icon is gone. I just saw that this morning.

I've had this problem since Thursday morning, then it stopped and now it's
back. I have run AVG virus and spyware both and it found nothing. I also
purchased McAfee System Mechanic, it found the usual, registry, defrag, etc.
but nothing associated to this.

It's a Dell, about 5 years old running windows XP. I've added memory, a
second hard drive, graphics card so it's a good computer for me.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[Elmo]

Help, when I click on the start button on the task menu it pops up briefly
then disappears. So do ALL my menus, ie: right mouse click, any of the pull
down menus, file, edit, view, etc.

When I double click an icon it open the properties, I have to double click a
few times before it will open.

When typing, characters only appear if you hit the key right when the curser
blinks on.

My "my computer" icon is gone. I just saw that this morning.

I've had this problem since Thursday morning, then it stopped and now it's
back. I have run AVG virus and spyware both and it found nothing. I also
purchased McAfee System Mechanic, it found the usual, registry, defrag, etc.
but nothing associated to this.

It's a Dell, about 5 years old running windows XP. I've added memory, a
second hard drive, graphics card so it's a good computer for me.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

A few things to try:

Try lowering graphics hardware acceleration slide. You can lower
graphics hardware acceleration in Display Properties, Settings tab,
Advanced button, Troubleshooting tab. If this helps, you probably need
a different graphics card or drivers.

Several dialog boxes are blank
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831430

Transparent drop-down Menu and disappearing menu text
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/transmenu.htm

 

[leahizhere]

Hi Elmo,

Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't work. I even disabled my video
card and re went back to the original one. And I downloaded the Service Pack
3 and all the other suggestions from Microsoft that I needed.

Another problem that I forgot is the wheel on the mouse now zooms AND
scrolls.

This whold thing is such a weird problem, I've never seen anything like it.
It's like it's running on a differnet clock or something. The timing is off.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Leah

 

[Elmo]

Hi Elmo,

Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't work. I even disabled my video
card and re went back to the original one. And I downloaded the Service Pack
3 and all the other suggestions from Microsoft that I needed.

Another problem that I forgot is the wheel on the mouse now zooms AND
scrolls.

This whold thing is such a weird problem, I've never seen anything like it.
It's like it's running on a differnet clock or something. The timing is off.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Leah

I get a duplication of most of your maladies if I press the Alt key and
click operate the mouse as you describe. An Alt key may be sticking.