Cannot Drag-and-Drop In Windows XP?!
Yesterday, my computer was chugging along just fine in the morning. In the afternoon, nothing special either, but when evening came, something really bad happened. I found that I could no longer 'drag-and-drop'!
I tried to drag-and-drop icons on my desktop. That didn't work. Neither did the same work with folders in Windows Explorer. Even the tabs in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 refused to budge when I dragged-and-dropped them.
The last person to use my computer was my sister. I suspected that she may have something to do with this. But when I confronted her, she maintained that she only watched some videos on YouTube using Firefox. Nothing else.
So I turned to Google for answer, searching for 'cannot drag-and-drop windows XP'. To my surprise, there was a long list of results. I will admit. I was also relieved that I was not alone.
There were a few registry fixes and most forums suggested checking for trojans and viruses. Well, those are always the easiest suggestions to give, I guess. But I was pretty sure my system was clean.
So I tried some registry patches including one at Kelly's Korner which was quite popular, but none of them worked. I've also tried rebooting my system several times with absolutely no effect. Unfortunately, most of the fixes were for Windows 2000, ME or 98. I was left confused and frustrated. Maybe my case was unique? I even changed the mouse just to be sure.
Drag-and-drop is probably one of the most used Windows feature and when it stopped working, it felt like I had lost an arm. I could no longer arrange the icons on my desktop or the icons on my quick launch bar. Neither could I drag folders or files to my desktop or anywhere else at all. I couldn't even drag audio or video files to the Windows Media Player playlist. I had to resort to using File -> Open to add files to the playlist!
Unfortunately, drag-and-drop was not the only feature not working right. When I tried to maximize µTorrent, it minimized itself! Right-clicking to access the context menu was a problem as well. What the **** is wrong with this system???
Just before I went to bed, I maximized the Windows Media Player for my mother who wanted to watch some episodes of her favourite dramas while I was at work the next day (just in case I forgot). When I woke up in this morning, I restored Windows Media Player to its normal display mode by pressing the Esc button on my keyboard to do some surfing before I went for work. That was when I noticed something amazing.
The Esc button on my keyboard was stucked!!! I popped the key and tested to drag-and-drop icons on my desktop. OMFGMAMAMIA!!! IT WORKED!!! Then I tried dragging and dropping the quick launch icons, and it worked too!!! Tried the tabs on Firefox, THAT WORKED TOO!!!
You can try this out. Press and hold the Esc (Escape) button on your keyboard and try to drag-and-drop icons or files. They won't budge, trust me. I truly cannot believe my luck. Here are two things that I missed out when I was troubleshooting the problem yesterday.
- µTorrent always minimized itself when it's maximized
- I didn't change the keyboard
The best thing of all was, I SOLVED THE PROBLEM before I became frustrated enough to reinstall Windows. Pheww...
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Date | Revision | Revision History |
28-05-2008 |
1.0 |
Initial Release. |