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Haunted XP Pro - phantom double-click

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by donalda-m 1 view

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I'm looking to see if any of my TR cohorts have a fix for this outside of an XP reload. (Sure, it's much more stable than 98 - it took a whole 6 months to develop problems.)

For a week or so I have been having several problems. The most common and annoying is that when I click on an object it is taken as a double-click. Needless to say, this is wreaking havoc with selecting files or text, using drop-down boxes and menus, etc. After a few tries it does sometimes work, but the problems seems to be getting progressively worse. Please note that this is NOT related to the setting which allows single clicking to open objects.

The second problem is that certain screen objects act as if they are transparent. For example, if I select an item from the File menu in Internet Explorer and there is a link dierectly below it on the web page I am viewing, that link opens.

Computer has been scanned with Norton and AVG programs, and is virus free. I have also rolled back XP without helping thesituation.
Has anyone seen this problem, and if so is there a fix short of reloading XP? I have tried to research the problem, but it's not an easy one to search.

Point given according to accuracy and ease of fix.

Thanks.

--Don

5 replies

by ann777

It sounds as if after six months use, that the OS needs cleaning. Have you been maintaining it? Disk Cleaning, Disk Defrag ? etc. Regular use and no maintenance will slow things down. What appears on the screen... apparently the system has notcaught up to you.

Look at #15 below.... clear out the c:\winpows\prefetches at least monthly.

http://www.datacreek.net/webgear/tips/xptweaks.html

Other tweaks on that site will also help. Also do standard maintenance: Clear out Temporary Internet Files, ~*.*. *.tmp etc. Do a complete defragmentation.

by sgt_shultz

what are you using for a mouse? rollerball? have you tried another mouse?
are you on a laptop?
I would try another mouse.
I would try disabling the touchpad for test (if laptop)
I would try uninstalling any software that came with my input device (like Trackman software)...

by donalda-m

Well, Occam's razor wins again. Because I was getting the "transparent" problem I thought it was something software/OS related, so I did not think of switching out the mouse just to make sure. Duh! It seems the mouse (Intellimouse Optical) was the problem, although now it's working OK again, which is strange if it's just a mechanical problem. If it goes again I'm going to have to get another one. It's had only about 6 months of use, although it's heavily used.

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