Windows 7 Inability to Select Menus...Disappear too Fast

[wolfpack416]

Seen multiple posts in this area but no solutions. It seems like the system is constantly cycling somehow, so there is never enough time to select from the All Programs list, or for a taskbar right click or even hard to select an app when Alt-Tab is pressed. You can see a slight blink on any open apps which seems to instantly preclude any open menus. It is very hard to select from any drop down or selection menus from any appl. I have tried Scannow, malware scanners, creating new profiles...all to now avail.

Anyone out there know of a solution?

 

[kemical]

Is your installation an upgrade or clean install?

 

[wolfpack416]

Inability to Select Menus....Disappear too Quickly

Clean install purchased with a Dell XPS8000.

 

[nehoma]

what exactly happens when you click on "all programs"

 

[cybercore]

Did you observe the same behavior the very first day using your system ? If not, then system restore could help.

Seen multiple posts in this area but no solutions. It seems like the system is constantly cycling somehow, so there is never enough time to select from the All Programs list, or for a taskbar right click or even hard to select an app when Alt-Tab is pressed. You can see a slight blink on any open apps which seems to instantly preclude any open menus. It is very hard to select from any drop down or selection menus from any appl. I have tried Scannow, malware scanners, creating new profiles...all to now avail.

Anyone out there know of a solution?

This is weird enough. You click on All Programs - you should see a list of installed programs, you right-click - you should see a context menu that stays untill you select an item or press a key.

1. Make sure that no other keys get pressed when you invoke a menu
2. An application that steals focus can be a temporary cause of that behavior
3. Close all 3rd party and non-essential processes and see if it helps

As for Alt-Tab, press Ctr-Alt-Tab, or press Alt-Tab and hold Alt down - so the switch menu stays until you select a window.

Did you apply any registry tweaks ?

 

[wolfpack416]

It is really any menu...On All Programs...sometimes it just goes away quickly, sometimes I can click on All Programs and then click on a menu item and then it pops away. When I click on an application drop down menu, I have to click it really fast or it disappears. If I right click on an application in the task bar, it goes away before I can click on an item in the list. It is like it is automatically shifting focus to something else (what, I have no idea...). The timing of the cycling is random, btw. Sometimes I get a little longer to click, other times it moves it right away.

I haven't tweaked the registry.

 

[Samperfy]

I have the exact same problem. If i right-clicked on any programs in "all programs" in the start menu, it always shows up and then quickly dissapears before i could do anything. I did a clean install and didn't do anything to tweak my windows 7. It's all original. Still can't figure out what's the problem.

1. I did a scan, and found no thread nor virus.
2. I created another "user profile" as administrator (as it was instructed in the web somewhere), and logged on with the new user (administrator). Still having the same problem.

Anyone else have this problem?

 

[RAK]

Try this:
Open the registry (regedit in the run or start box)
Navigate to: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
Change the following registry value: (If the entry is not there, right click the "Desktop" and create a new key) You may find it is already on the "400" default, which would , unfortunately, lead to some other problem.

String Value: 'MenuShowDelay'
Default value: (should be) 'MenuShowDelay'='400', if not, change it. You can experiment down to 0,which gives a really fast response, but that is what you are trying to avoid.
You could even go higher, if it already shows 400. Try 600 and study the response.

 

[Samperfy]

Hey, RAK.....
It works........Thank you very much. I've been looking for the answer on the net, and couldnt seem to find it, until u replied to the thread. Once again, thanks so much.....

 

[RAK]

A pleasure, Samperfly, and welcome to the site. We hope you will return. This site will sort out any future queries you may have.

 

[Saltgrass]

It would seem strange you need to add a registry setting on certain installs. If I open All Programs, then select one of the programs, the menu will stay open until I select something else with the mouse.

Anyway, I would have guessed it was related to the mouse driver or what options might be available in it... If the mouse is moving to another focus or something is requiring attention, you should be able to see it in Task Manager.

Someone the other day had a problem where his hidden taskbar kept jumping up. Maybe these types of problems are related.

 

[RAK]

I don't think it is a question of adding something to the registry. In some way, the registry has already been "tweaked". The fix I posted dates back to XP and is well publicised. I would guess that it had been altered from the default. In the case of the OP, maybe whoever installed on the DEll, tweaked it up to make it look more responsive for potential buyers.

 

[username2012]

I found a different solution to this problem which worked for me and I don't have a Dell / or a laptop. It's a Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium machine.

I edited the registry with "regedit" and changed the following key:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPererencesMask which is a "REG_BINARY" to the New value of "98 32 03 80 12 00 00 00"

The old value I had which had was "99 32 03 80 12 00 00 00" caused the windows or menu selections on the taskbar to disappear too quickly for me to move the mouse over them to make a selection. All I changed was that 99 to 98 which I looked on an other Windows 7 64-bit machine which did not have this problem.

It works great now!

Some posts tell you to change the key "MenuShowDelay" from 400 to a higher value but that did nothing for me.
Hope this helps someone.

 

[jra31657]

I battlled with this problem for a few months now, tried EVERYTHING that was suggested on any site, and there are MANY people reporting this problem with MANY different fixes working for them. None worked for me but I just found the problem and thought i would share. What I finally tried was going into system config and disabling all service and start up files then rebooting. And the problem disapeared. So then it was a matter of trial and error. Enable all service files, reboot, still good so it must be a file in start up. Enable first ten start up files, reboot, it's back. So it's one of those ten. After losts of reboots I finally found one file in start up that is put there when i log into my companies servers via Citrix. Why that file screw things up i don't know yet but wanted to give others a possible solution if all else fails. As long as i keep it disabled all is fine.

 

[AjaxSmith]

I found a different solution to this problem which worked for me and I don't have a Dell / or a laptop. It's a Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium machine.

I edited the registry with "regedit" and changed the following key:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPererencesMask which is a "REG_BINARY" to the New value of "98 32 03 80 12 00 00 00"

The old value I had which had was "99 32 03 80 12 00 00 00" caused the windows or menu selections on the taskbar to disappear too quickly for me to move the mouse over them to make a selection. All I changed was that 99 to 98 which I looked on an other Windows 7 64-bit machine which did not have this problem.

It works great now!

Some posts tell you to change the key "MenuShowDelay" from 400 to a higher value but that did nothing for me.
Hope this helps someone.

I've the problem on Windows7 32-bit. The UPM value is 9e 3e 07 80 12 00 00 00. How should I change it?

 

[Jolle]

Hi, I signed up just to confirm jra31657's solution above. I uninstalled the Citrix software and the after a reboot the problem was gone.
Btw, the problem appeared when I set up parental control using the Microsoft Familysafety feature.

 

[LTP]

Seen multiple posts in this area but no solutions. It seems like the system is constantly cycling somehow, so there is never enough time to select from the All Programs list, or for a taskbar right click or even hard to select an app when Alt-Tab is pressed. You can see a slight blink on any open apps which seems to instantly preclude any open menus. It is very hard to select from any drop down or selection menus from any appl. I have tried Scannow, malware scanners, creating new profiles...all to now avail.

Anyone out there know of a solution?

After many hours search and troubleshooting I found that Dropbox is known to steal focus see Solved: Office365 and Dropbox, stealing "focus" - Dropbox Community - 236604 it is said that the Dropbox badge which steals the focus can be turned off How do I turn the Dropbox badge on or off? but I failed to do so. Instead, I disabled it via START msconfig startup untick Dropbox OK and that solved the problem for me. If you have no Dropbox installed and running you might need to troubleshoot using the instructions on https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

 

[SReiner]

Glad I read to the bottom of this thread. Dropbox was causing the problem for me. I have it disabled for now and my drop-downs no longer disappear. Apparently Dropbox is intent on grabbing focus quite often. Rather annoying.
Thanks very much for the post.

 

[Lambda530]

Glad I read to the bottom of this thread. Dropbox was causing the problem for me. I have it disabled for now and my drop-downs no longer disappear. Apparently Dropbox is intent on grabbing focus quite often. Rather annoying.
Thanks very much for the post.

I have been dealing with this for weeks and the previous posts were of no help. My system starting responding this way while I was working on a rather large Word document. Disabling Dropbox corrected the problem immediately. My thought is that Dropbox did an update in the background and initiated the problem.
Thanks for the post.

 

[terpenator]

LTP: Thanks for the tip! For MS Excel 2007 running in Windows 7 on my system, Dropbox was causing this issue. I set the Dropbox Badge to "Never Show." This seemed to fix the issue with Excel menus going away too fast, and I can still use Dropbox.