Behavior of Windows ALT Key And Stuck ALT - Clicking Brings up Properties! :(

[The Gorn]

This is the kind of simple but frustrating bug that REALLY tees me off! 

A few days ago the following started to happen in Windows 7 all of a sudden:

Clicking on a taskbar shortcut brought up the properties dialog for the shortcut.

Double clicking on a folder in an Exploder window brought up the folder properties dialog.

I got Windows back to normal only by doing a system restore from a restore point.

GRAW!

So the same freaking thing happened to me tonight. It really throws you when it happens because to open anything you now have to right click and click on Open in the context menu.

I realized something simple, though. You can force the left mouse button to bring up properties by holding down ALT. It's a simple keyboard shortcut.

So I pressed and released the ALT. All of a sudden the left mouse click was back to normal!  The ALT key was acting like a freaking stuck shift key.

Possibly it is my VOIP application I am debugging. It monitors the SHIFT and other keys to detect hot key presses. But this had never ever happened before this week.

I also observed one odd thing, maybe not related, with respect to the ALT key. If an Explorer window has focus, pressing the ALT key toggles the display of a "text" menu bar (the CUA style menu with the File, Edit, View, etc selections.)

Any thoughts or theories about the weird stuck ALT key issue? I can't induce it manually through pressing the ALT key. The ALT in normal use acts like an "SPST" switch, not a shift key.

[Origisaurus]

One of two things:

• You have created a monster in your code.
  
  You have unearthed a monster in M$ code.
  

Odds-on favorite - #2


Oops, I think I just stumbled on a bug.  See my code.

[The Gorn]

I took a quick look. Your LI tags are funky.

Re: monster. Not crippling in my hands, just INCREDIBLY irritating because your normal typing reflexes get you nowhere.

But crippling for average users who aren't hip to the common keyboard shortcuts. I'm the McGyver of workarounds, but this would send most end users to a computer repair place.

[TRexx]

I wish there was a way to display all the keyboard shortcuts and optionally disable them.   I'm a lousy typist. So bad that I always pry off the Caps Lock key.   If I didn't need the Scrolllock key for my KVM it would be gone as well.

Not long ago I accidentally turned by display 90 degrees. Makes moving the mouse quite an adventure.   Luckily I was able to switch my, KVM to my other PC so I could Google for the shortcut to turn it back.  But if I hadn't I would have suspected a hardware problem.

[The Gorn]

Not long ago I accidentally turned by display 90 degrees. Makes moving the mouse quite an adventure.   Luckily I was able to switch my, KVM to my other PC so I could Google for the shortcut to turn it back.  But if I hadn't I would have suspected a hardware problem.

When I tried computer support I ran into a customer PC that had a vertically flipped display from a virus.

[PhilFromNY]

It may be a hardware (spilled coffee induced) failure.  Have you tried switching keyboards?