Tip 394: Tweaks and Unintended Consequences

The rules of unintended consequences often apply to tweaks to the operating system, negatively affecting how Outlook works, as an Outlook user discovered recently:

I had to reformat my HD, clean installed XP Home SP2 and reinstall Office XP SP3 with all updates to everything.  Whenever I try to create an appointment when the date or time drop down is clicked, it disappears when I move the cursor to click on a date or time in the list.  I can manually enter the information, and this does not happen with any other applications. Any thoughts?

Typically, the first suggestion when there is an odd issue such as this is to run detect and repair. Many times it fixes the problem. It didn't in this case, as the poster later figured out the problem:

Actually, I did run detect & repair with no solution.  About 5 minutes ago, I was poking around my system.  I have Tweak UI installed and was looking at the mouse settings.  The box next to "Activation follows mouse" was checked and I decided to try unchecking it and that solved the problem.

Note that any tweak, whether it's something you do by editing the registry, using TweakUI, any other tweak utility, or even tweaks enabled in driver software, such as the Office 97 scroll setting in Logitech mouse software, may be responsible for changes in the behavior of, or problems with, features. If problems start suddenly, review the programs you installed or options you changed recently. This is especially important if you choose to use TweakUI – it's a great little program and you can change a lot of system settings, but its also caused a lot of tech support calls over the years.

Published February 16, 2007. Last updated on January 26, 2018.