Why can't I drag and drop in windows?

May 4, 2004 7:56 AM

Can’t drag and drop in windows. (actual prob inside)

I have some friends that I do tech support for. I was over at their house last night and they remarked that they couldn’t drag and drop. I took a look at the machine and sure enough, using explorer in any of its incarnations (My Computer or the Windows Explorer) they cannot drag and drop. If I try to drag a file from the desktop to the recycle bin or a desktop folder I get the windows icon of the circle with a slash through it telling me I can’t do that. If I try to drag from folder to folder inside the explorer, it just doesn’t do anything. They had GaoBot virus which I removed with the tool from Symantec’s website, but still no drag and drop. My Google-Fu has left me high and dry this AM. Any suggestions?

posted by spartacusroosevelt to computers & internet (6 comments total)

What version of Winders? Do they have Winders ME?
posted by littlegreenlights at 8:56 AM on May 4, 2004

Sorry meant to answer that ? ahead of time. Win2K SP4 with all released patches as of about two weeks ago.
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 9:01 AM on May 4, 2004

I'm kind of a pacifist with my computers, I yield to their demands :P I'd just start copying and pasting files instead at this point, but that's me ;)
posted by abcde at 11:23 AM on May 4, 2004

A fellow named henry came on #mefi and asked me to post a link to this MS knowledgebase article. Hope that helps.
posted by beth at 1:32 PM on May 4, 2004

My ex-girlfriend had this exact same problem — I removed all spyware and viruses from her machine, and it fixed the problem. I think that some spyware/viruses have bugs that prevent drag/drop from working.
posted by brool at 3:52 PM on May 4, 2004

Thanx beth (and henry, wherever you are). That did the trick. Now why didn't I find that when I scoured the Knowledge Base?
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 7:49 PM on May 4, 2004