The Glade 4.0

I have a weird problem that only happens when I initially boot up my Windows 7 PC.

The mouse cursor works, I can move it around, but the buttons are unresponsive. I hover over the start menu and the quicklaunch buttons and they don't even "highlight" and clicking them does nothing. The only way I've found to fix this is to hit CTRL + ALT + DEL and open task manager. In fact, the open task manager button in the CTRL+ALT+DEL menu even lags before highlighting and becoming responsive...but clicking that and opening the task manager somehow unlocks the functionality of all of the buttons on the taskbar (quicklaunch, start menu, etc)


Any idea what could be causing this?

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Ron Paul 2012

have you tried a different mouse?

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Hmmm. No, but I'm lead to believe this is a software issue with Windows. I'll have to try another mouse if I can find one.

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Ron Paul 2012

Hmmm...no idea. Try hitting ctrl + shift + esc to open the task manager directly and see if you get the same results.

Also, try logging in with a different (preferably brand-new) account. This will tell you whether it's a machine-wide problem, or just something hinky with your user profile.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Huh..okay, ctrl+shift+esc doesn't work. It didn't bring up the task manager at all, no response.

I did find out I can right click the desktop and get the right-click menu from there, open up "Personalize" and then I still can't click on anything in that window, can't even hit the "X" button to exit the window, the only way out is to ALT+F4, or use ctrl+alt+del to bring up the system menu and then click "open taskbar". It's as if I have to left click on the system menu once to enable left click functionality anywhere else on the system.

Weird.

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Ron Paul 2012

This is really starting to sound like some sort of nasty spyware infection, how long have you had this PC running? Run a full scan lately with a good prog?

i should do that...lol


i still haven't tried another account or another mouse...i'll get around to those eventually

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Ron Paul 2012

Yeah, this is sounding more spyware-y by the minute, IMHO. It's not the only possibility, but, but trying to block access to the task manager is a common malware tactic. What's unteresting here is that you're able to get around it with CTRL + ALT + Del, but not CTRL + Shift + ESC. A little bit of Windows trivia: the CAD sequence isn't intercepted by the keyboard driver like other key sequences. Instead it triggers a special interrupt handler in the kernel itself. The purpose of this arrangement is ostensibly to make it more difficult for someone to create a false Windows login screen to capture login/pass combos. Thus, most corporate deployment require pressing CAD to trigger the login. This is supposed to assure the user that they're using a real Windows login. It used to be that the only way to change your password was through CAD while logged in, but they've since made it possible to work around that via the control panel.

So...it kind of sounds to me like you've got some flavor of malware that can intercept the CTRL + Shift + ESC sequence, but not CAD. It might still be something more mundane, like a fouled up mouse driver, but in any case, I feel pretty certain that this is a software issue not a hardware problem.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

ctrl-alt-delete
Start Task Manager
tab to processes
find explorer.exe
end task

ctrl-alt-delete
Start Task Manager
file --> new task
run explorer.exe

works for me ... haven't found the cause yet

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“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.” - Pearl S. Buck

might be possible to write a 3 line batch file if you're going to be doing this regularly.