About Gary Housknecht Expertise common keyboard shortcuts; internet keyboard functionality; use shift key to undo caps lock; reassign key functions; wireless keyboard questions
Experience 10+ years PC software and hardware tech support.
Expert: Gary Housknecht Date: 12/8/2004 Subject: problem w/ right click menus
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Followup To
Question -
I have an optical mouse and the problem I've been having is that I can't get a menu to appear with certain funtions. If I click on my "start" button, I can right click either "my comp.", "my documents" or "my pictures" and get a menu. But after I open one say my documents for example--if I try to right click a picture or a movie, nothing happens. Same when I try to right click an icon on my desktop or a blank spot on the desktop, no menu appears. But if I right click in any part of my IE browser, I can get a menu.
Do you know what might be causing this? I have a feeling that either a dll file is missing or something is messed up in the registry. I appriciate your help on this. Thank you.
Answer -
Has this problem just cropped up or has it been doing this for some time? If it is a new problem, can you think of some system change you might have made about the same time it started? Or some new download, perhaps? Have you checked for a virus lately? What operating system do you have (ie. WinXP Home or Pro or what)?
Provide me more details and I'll try to help ... but in the meantime, if you have (and know how to use it) TweakUI for Windows, go to the bottom of its menus and select to rebuild (repair) icons. That might help.
Gary
Gary:
I run windows xp and the only major d/l I did was service pack 2 (from the cd I was sent) which what might be causing this problem. I ran ad aware,spybot and symatic virus checker, and it didn't find anything out of the ordinary as far as a virus or highjacker. I also took your sugg. and d/l tweak ui and did what you said to do and that didn't work either. This prob. started about 2 wks. ago and the service pack 2 was d/l about a month ago. To my knowledge I didn't make any other changes to my comp. Do you think reinstalling ser. pack 2 might fix it? or is there other things you can suggest?. Thanks again for your help.
Answer I really wish I could be of more help but I am somewhat stymied without being there. The only other things I can suggest is to 1) look at your various security settings (administrative tools, IE6 options, firewall, anti-virus, etc.). Also 2) your desktop settings, such as whether or not you allow active Web content, etc.
In general, and as my last bit of advice, try closing a variety of apps and services one at a time using Task Manager - and see if something being loaded is causing the problem.
Do me a favor and let me know how you eventually solve the problem. I am very curious.
