Start Menu problems (among other things)

[Chris]

OK, this problem is driving me up the wall.
I can't use my start->programs menu. I can open it, but I
can't select anything in it, not even with the keyboard.
The blue highlighting bar never appears. But the system
DOES NOT lock up! I can easily close the menu with the
mouse or keyboard, I just can't use it. And it's just the
programs menu, the rest of the start menu works fine.

Another thing I have noticed that seems to stem from the
same problem (at least they always happen in tandum) is
that my keyboard stops working in certain programs. I've
noticed this most often in ZSNES (the win32 verson). The
mouse works fine but the program won't respond to keyboard
input. However, the windows key and other shortcuts
(alt-f4, ctrl-alt-del, etc.) still work normally. I
thought it might just be the program, but the fact that it
only happens when this start menu thing breaks leads me to
think that the problems stem from the same source.

This problem used to go away after a reboot, but the last
three or four times i've rebooted it's been there from the
beginning. I should note that it doesn't happen exactly at
startup, usually about 30 sec. after I log on.

If anyone has any clue as to what's going on, I would be
very apreciative. I really don't want to have to reinstall
the OS. It's such a pain.

Systems Specs:
OS: Windows XP Home (Without SP2, uninstalled it to see if
it fixed the problem, it didn't.)
CPU: 3 GHz Pentium 4
RAM: 1 Gb PC3200 DDR
Soundcard: Soundblaster Audigy 2
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

 

[Chris]

Quick Update:
I did some tooling around with some other programs (Myst
IV, Doom 3, some other apps) I have discovered that ZSNES
was lucky, most of the other programs don't even respond to
the mouse. As usual, all keyboard shortcuts work normally
and I can shut the programs down with the task manager
without incident or error. Strangely, it seems only full
screen apps are affected. I tried a couple windowed things
(card games mostly), and they seem to work fine.

 

[larry]

I would run error checking. Need help? Open help and
support and search for "error checking"

Also you can get more
inforation by opening up event viewer.
Need help? Open up help and support and search for "event
viewer"

Look for red colored events that in application and
system that relate to time of your error and open, that
will give you a module(program) maybe a .dll also. Use
Search companion to look up that program name to isolate
what is giving you a problem.Then select microsoft
link. Repy yes. That will open up help and support(if you
have an internet connection} If need to copy and paste
here at this newsgroup.

 

[Guest]

That's what I find really wierd about this, according to
the event viewer and every other error checker I could
think to run or check, nothing is wrong. No errors are
being logged and no applications or processes are hanging
or crashing. It's like the input commands are just being
lost somewhere between the buffer and the program.