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Empty drop menues on right click and unable to type or select text in most places

  • 13 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 17 views
  • Last reply by Kodaik

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Recently a lot of these issues started at once: The text cursor disappears if my mouse cursor is on the browser window for too long (less than a second) except for address bar; When I right click on anything in the browser the drop menu is empty(fields are still there and are functional but have no text in them) Also when any of this happens my mouse cursor blinks rapidly for a second and disappears shortly (Typing all this was really difficult)

Recently a lot of these issues started at once: The text cursor disappears if my mouse cursor is on the browser window for too long (less than a second) except for address bar; When I right click on anything in the browser the drop menu is empty(fields are still there and are functional but have no text in them) Also when any of this happens my mouse cursor blinks rapidly for a second and disappears shortly (Typing all this was really difficult)

All Replies (13)

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Forgot to mention that no shortcuts work (ctrl+c, ctrl+v etc.)

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Is this just specific websites? If so, can you share those?

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usedtoliveonmars said

Is this just specific websites? If so, can you share those?

Every website so far, except for the homepage

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Example of whats happening

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You may have switched on caret browsing. You can toggle caret browsing off/on by pressing F7 (Mac: fn + F7).

  • Options/Preferences -> General: Browsing
    remove checkmark: [ ] "Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages"

Note that this is a Firefox accessibility feature.

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Themes
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window
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cor-el said

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.
  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Themes
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window

It didn't help.. The "help" menu also had no text in it and the "developer" menu had no text on the last option. That was fixed together with the right click menu but the cursor problems were not.

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Turns out that cursor freak out only on "bigger" websites such as Google, Bing, YouTube, Wikipedea, well known forums etc. But anything less known works fine

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Do you see the text if you hover a line or use the cursor Down key to scroll a list ?

Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support to see if that has effect in case security software is causing problems.

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cor-el said

Do you see the text if you hover a line or use the cursor Down key to scroll a list ? Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support to see if that has effect in case security software is causing problems.

I still couldn't see any text But that was fixed when I changed the theme

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Everything worked fine when I run windows in safe mode

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The missing text was possibly an issue with the text color being white or transparent. Did you change the Windows theme or did you make changes in Firefox to fix this?

Can you give more detail about the text cursor and typing issue ?

Can that also be a problem with the text color ?

EDIT: (I had missed your last reply a minute before my reply)

Modified by cor-el

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cor-el said

The missing text was possibly an issue with the text color being white or transparent. Did you change the Windows theme or did you make changes in Firefox to fix this? Can you give more detail about the text cursor and typing issue ? Can that also be a problem with the text color ? EDIT: (I had missed your last reply a minute before my reply)

Turns out it was malware. Adding Avast online security fixed the problem