All drop down boxes flip-out, print dialog in any AIM IM repeatedly pops up

I had this problem a few months ago and I couldn't find any thing on it. No one seemed to have ever seen this problem. It got so annoying that I just wiped out my entire hard drive and restored XP. That was about 2 months ago. Lastnight it mysteriously started doing this again. If i have IE open, the drop down address box goes crazy. It's like someone is clicking the down arrow repeatedly. It does the same thing if I try to save something - It's hard to save something because the location drop down box keeps dropping - and you can't do anything else until it stops. Once it stops, it waits a second or two, and starts over. Basically whenever there's a drop down box, i get this problem.

On AIM, anytime I'm in an IM convo it tries to print. IT brings up the print dialog - and i have a laptop, no printer hooked up 99% of the time, so i get an error. The only way i can stop this is to hit esc to get rid of the error boxes, I have to keep hitting it until I get to the original IM and close that out too.

This is all very annoying. I've tried restore points and they don't do anything. I've looked for anything weird in the task manager processes... and the startup files in msconfig. I don't get it, and it seems as if no one else has ever had this problem!! ahhh it's so annoying!

So, any suggestions, ideas, etc???

Thanks!!

 

First a couple of questions.

Is this only happening when you are in IE or an AIM session so that word processing or other PC tasks do fine?

If all else is fine, have you tried using them while connected to the internet?

 

The drop down menu thing happens in almost any program - most noticeably on other programs when i'm trying to save a document. If i go into "my computer" the top drop down box does it too. It happens whether i'm connected to the internet or not.

The printing problem only occurs in IMs through AIM.

 

This sounds like it may be something as simple as a bad keyboard/mouse or their connections to the PC.

I think I'll move this thread to the hardware section for now. Some of the hardware guys never look in this section. If they decide it is not hardware we can move it back here and try some other software things.

 

ok, thanks for your help. That did just remind me though -- before I wiped everything out last time and reinstalled XP that a few of the buttons on my keyboard wouldn't work sometimes. They've all worked fine since then though. Thanks again.

 

Newt might be right about it being a hardware problem but the fact that you wiped things clean and started over and mangaged to get rid of the problem makes me wonder. Have you tried system restore?

 

Yeah, I restored it to the day before the problem started, no luck. So I restored it to as far as i could - no luck. I'm thinking it is hardware though because when I turned it on thismorning it kept beeping as soon as it got past the main dell screen where you can opt to enter the bios set-up. It wouldn't boot after that, it said i was missing some files - I can't recall exactly which files at the moment - but after the 3rd time of powering off and on it booted up fine... Still had the AIM/drop down problems though. I did notice some keys aren't working - actually its not that they don't work but i can't do a capital E unless I use caps locks or i use the shift button on the left side. I'm going to open it up tonight and check the keyboard connections (its a laptop). If this is the problem, i'll definately agree that it's weird that wiping everything out solved the problem for any amount of time.

Thanks for all of your help.

 

Hey guys - i just took my laptop apart, and got under the keyboard - cleaned out a bunch of dust and dirt under there (it's crazy how much was under there!). Anyways after i did that i reconnected it and made sure it was snug - and I haven't had a problem since. Thanks!