Hardware or Software ???

[Chuck27508]

I am running Windows 7 Home Edition, an old celeron processor, about 3.06 ghz I believe and all updates are current. A month or so ago I started having issues when shutting down and restarting the computer. When I restart I have noticed that the Start Menu is open, stays open for a while, then disappears. I don't think this has always been the case. The biggest problem is that when I try to click on an icon on the desktop, like My Computer for instance, about 5 or more of the folder or icon will open up. The mouse does not function properly as well. For instance if you just happen to drag the mouse over an icon or folder, it tries to open up the folder many times. The only thing I have found that fixes this proble is to type something into the search box on the start menu and let it search for it...it can be chkdsk, or you can type in jibberesh such as kkkkkkkkk and it will fix the problem of the multiple page/folders opening up when u click on them. It's like the search function needs to "do something" before things return to normal.  I've also notice that there is a problem most of the time when trying to schedule chkdsk. Most of the time upon restarting the computer I get a message that chkdsk has been scheduler, and then below that it says it's been cancelled and it will not run. I think I've managed to get it to run once like that, and have no idea why it worked that time. Not sure if the two problems are connected or not. It's an old computer  . I've tried lots of fixes...sfc, chkdsk, changes to the registry, with no results. Thanks in advance.

[Allan]

!) What do you mean "changes to the registry"? EXACTLY what did you do?

2) What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

3) Have you run a full system scan with both your AV and MalwareBytes? If not, please do so now.

4) How does it run in safe mode?

[Chuck27508]

The change to the registry had nothing to do with the problems since the problems were there already. I'm sure lots of changes have been made as far as programs and software since the problem first occured. I'm not sure of the exact date it started. I have removed all unneccary programs from my computer, run a full virus scan with AVG and MalwareBytes. No viruses, some adware I removed, no help. Doesn't work any better in safe mode. Ran 2 free registry cleaners that revoved lots of unneccesary files in the registry..still no help. Is there nowhere I can go on here to stop the Start Menu from opening when the computer boots up? Any setting in the services area that controls that? That may solve my problem, since typing in that search box fixes the problem immediately.

[Allan]

Registry cleaners CAUSE problems, they do not cure them. And I'd still like to know what registry changes you made. The likelihood is that your system is now in worse shape than before you started trying to fix it.

If you want to try to stop the start menu from opening you can try this procedure:

Open msconfig and on the General tab choose "selective startup" (uncheck all three items) and reboot. Does the problem still occur? If not, start adding items back to msconfig one or two at a time, rebooting after each change, until the problem reappears and you'll have identified the offending process. This is clearly a time consuming procedure, but it is the best way to determine if some process loading with the system is the cause of your problem.

After you've isolated the cause, do not use msconfig to permanently disable the process. Instead, if it is a service go to START - RUN and type: services.msc (then press enter) and disable the service OR, if it a program, you can download & run a simple app such as Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml) to enable, disable, or otherwise manage startup programs.

[Chuck27508]

Ok I tried all the suggestions and none of them worked. Finally I started thinking about how the problem always immediately corrected when I typed something into the search box below the Start Menu. So I started thinking maybe it was keyboard related. Sure enough I sign on, and as usual the Start menu is popped up and if you try to do anything it goes nutso just like I stated in the first post. So I decided to press the "Search" button on the keyboard and see what happened. It fixed the problem immediately,  just like the typing did.  So then I decided to try another keyboard, booted up, no start menu popped up, everything worked perfectly. This also solved the problem of chkdsk not working when I had scheduled it at boot time.  I have restarted several times, even shut down completely and restarted, scheduling chkdsk a couple of those times and everything works perfectly.