Strange Annoyance

[eliwood914]

I'm running into an annoyance in Vista that I've seen before on XP though I can't seem to find any documented solution for it.

Basically, I can move the cursor around the screen, but anything I try to click on doesn't work, and the window that's currently active loses focus. So the buttons don't work, the close button in the title bar doesn't glow if I roll over it (nor does it work if I click on it). It's as if there's a hidden process that's robbing focus all the time. I've done a virus and spyware sweep, and nothing comes up.

I can temporarily work around this by opening up the task manager oddly enough, and the problem will disappear for a while.

Nothing else is wrong with this Vista install, just this annoyance. I'm unable to clean install for a few weeks, so that's entirely out of the question right now. Thanks in advance for your responses.

My specs are below. I've made sure all my drivers are Vista compatible.

Performance Score - 4.5

2.0 GHz Core Duo (32-bit)

1 GB RAM

GeForce Go 7800

80 GB (7200 rpm)

Logitech G5 Mouse (made sure this had the proper drivers several times over)

Edit: The symptoms are exactly as described here, but removing ctfmon.exe from my processes, disabling at startup and rebooting did NOT solve the problem. http://www.actualtools.com/forum/read.php?FID=9&TID=63

Edited March 5, 2007 by eliwood914