Problem: windows form fields don't work

[Erdaron]

I was wondering if someone could help me with this.

Certain forms don't work. Fields appear, and when I wave the mouse over them, the cursor changes to the text cursor, but the blinking cursor does not appear in the field when I click on it, and I can't type anything into them.

This happens with the dialogs when trying to create a user or change user options. I first noticed this in Skype, where I couldn't update my personal information. At first I thought this was just a bug in Skype, but then it cropped up in Windows itself.

Software: Windows XP Home Edition SP2, with all the routine updates and patches installed.

Hardware: Lenovo 3000 C100 laptop, with Intel Celeron 1.5GHz CPU, 1.24 GB of RAM, and a 34 GB hdd (10 GB free).

[gwoodard]

Okay do you have any protection from viruses, ad-ware, spyware, malware...

[Erdaron]

Yes, I run Norton Internet Security suite.

Though now that you mention it, its spyware protection is very weak. I should run a Spybot S&D just in case. I haven't done this in a while.

[gwoodard]

It also could be a problem in the registry...you could try some registry fixing program

[Erdaron]

Ok, Spybot found nothing. However, my subscription to NIS is expiring, and I will probably switch to CA or something opensource.

If it is a registry problem - what tools can I use and what should I be looking for? I've never really fooled with it, so all pointers are welcome.

[kulturloseramerikaner]

The registry is ALWAYS a problem in Win, so it's not a bad idea to run a registry tuneup utility anyway, though I can't think offhand of what would be causing the symptoms you describe. I don't know of any FOSS registry tools offhand but I have used Uniblue Registry Booster, and it seemed to speed things up a bit. It found over 400 registry errors on my lappy which was only about 6 mos. old and didn't have much on it (the Win partition anyway) and around 750 on the desktop.

[Erdaron]

An update: I downloaded Eusing free registry cleaner (it's more of a shareware, really). On the first scan, it identified around 2500 errors in the registry. That's probably not good. Even if it doesn't fix this problem.

I've noticed that many programs I've deleted still have registry keys, so I'm going to start by fixing those.

[Erdaron]

I managed to remove about 1900 errors in the registry, cases in which I could figure out what the entry was referring to and if it was something that's been removed but I didn't care about.

None of it has helped, though.

Something else: if I try to type in a field, after a while the ghost cursor seems to skip out of the field where I was typing, and error messages appear. The first one reads "User accounts: unspecified error." The second one is "User accounts: Object doesn't support this property or method." This keeps looping for a while.

I'm wondering if it has anything to do with having installed Microsoft XML office support (so that my office XP can read XML office files).

Any clues? Reinstalling windows seems like a tremendous hassle right now.

[Erdaron]

*bump*

Anybody can help? [-o<