strange xp problems

Can anyone help?

Some of the Office applications on a colleagues computer have a "mind of there own ". Word temporally freezes and automatically opens a taskbar tab, for instance View without any input from the user.

If more than one application is running on the desktop. They will toggle between one another without any input.

The computer is running Windows XP Professional and Office XP Professional on a network with group policy and user restrictions, however there are approx 40 other users with the same set-up who are experiencing no problems.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Luke Hurst

I.T Assistant

Mark J Rees Chartered Accountants

 

Temporarily disconnect from the network, uninstall Word, reboot, reinstall Word, reconnect to the network. If Office is actually installed on the server instead of the workstation, this won't work.

Johanna

 

This is probably way off base but you might also try using a different keyboard. Sounds like it could be a sticky key of some sort. If for instance, if you had a sticky alt key it would toggle between windows everytime you used the tab key. Might also try a different mouse. I've seen them cause some pretty odd problems when something goes wrong with them. I would think though, that if either of these were the problem, you'd see problems in other programs too. Worth a try though.

 

Thanks for the suggestions,

I tried alternative keyboards/mice and in the process I discovered that the software used to run Audio Typing Pedals is somehow conflicting with Outlook.

Does anyone have any suggestions why the pedals would conflict with Outlook?

When the pedals are connected, Outlook launches the voice recognition software setup (which is not used and never has been).

Thanks

Luke

 

Sorry, but I don't have any idea what what audio typing pedals is (are). I would have a look in the software and see if there are any hotkeys assigned for it. Maybe have a look at the help file and see what (if anything) it says about voice recognition. Do you have a link to a web page that shows what you're talking about? Without knowing just what it is, this is the best I can think of. Maybe somebody else will know.

 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

I appreciate your help on this matter.

Luke

 

When reading this, I vaguely remembered a past problem with "Voice recognition" software and MSOffice. It stuck in my head because it was one of those "slightly different hair pulling" problem/fixes. I don't know if this is even related to your current problem and will probably involve futher investigation but I'm going to throw it in here just in case.

http://www.computeruser.com/news/02/03/12/news1.html

Your probably heading in the right dirrection looking towards a "Typing Pedals" bug. I sure would appreciate an update when you finally track this down. This is a curiousity.