XP pretending windows don't exist

RMH03

Hello, my friend has a problem with windows XP that has both of us stumped

XP pro(SP2 all updates), Logitech G7 mouse, Sempron 1.10Ghz 1Gb generic bum-ram 80gb maxtor ide radeon 9250

His PC has been sitting under a desk unused for roughly 3 months, he booted it today and had the following problems:

Can't move desktop icons-when this is attempted, the offending icon will just ping back into place as if auto arrange was on(it's not)

He loses the ability to click inside windows-all windows are displayed properly but clicks inside said windows do nothing, he can navigate just fine using keyboard shotcuts but not using the mouse. This problem is not constant and when it occurs a reboot seems to sort it out temporarily.

Now neither of us are novices when it comes to PC's so we've done the obvious, virus checks etc.

I found a sugestion elsewhere that creating a new admin acount may resolve these, it didn't. Sounds like registary problem right? we've treid scanning the reg. found a few invalid keys delted them this didn't solve the issuse. We're both stumped, so i come to you H/A for some ...well help and advice.

RMH03

fell of the first page.
*bump*

ElectricTurtle

These symptoms sound more virus-like than Windows corruption, although anything is possible. I'd just recommend the usual, sysinternals.com for Process Explorer and Autoruns. If you can't find anything suspicious with those, try running sfc. If that doesn't work, dban :P

tsmvengy

Yup, it's probably not worth the hassle to actually deal with this. Copy what you need off the drive and then reformat & start over.