windows 7 magnifier will show ONLY a small rectangle and no controls

phinds · 10 Dec 2015

I just built a new workstation (finished the hardware build yesterday) and the magnifier worked fine up until this morning. I suspect windows "fixed" something in an automatic upgrade, but it's very strange and I wonder if anyone else has ever seen anything like it.

When activated by my intellimouse's magnifier button it opens up just as it always did, BUT ... the size and on/off control box is not present and the magnification is just in a rectangle that takes up less that a fourth of the screen and cannot be resized.

I can move the box over anything on the screen, all the way to the top/bottom and edges, but I'd really like to have the normal magnifier functionality.

Any thought?

Thanks

P.S. I DID spent some time browsing the "magnifier" answers on this wonderful forum, but did not find anything similar to my problem. I point that out because I hate it when people come to a forum and ask a question that has already been answered upteen times.

whs · 10 Dec 2015

The controls are there but they disappear quickly. You have to hurry to catch them.

phinds · 10 Dec 2015

whs said:

The controls are there but they disappear quickly. You have to hurry to catch them.

No, on my system they are not. There is not even the remotest flash of anything other than the small magnified window opening.

I AM running a SSD boot drive. Is it possible that they are so fast as to be literally invisible? I checked a couple of times. Not a hit of anything happening other than the magnify window opening.

In any case, IS there an option in the controls to set the magnification box to a small size. I forget because on my laptop the magnifier died years ago and NOTHING would bring it back including updating the graphics driver and trying every suggesting I could find on the internet at the time.

whs · 10 Dec 2015

This is the size of my box. I don't think the SSD has anything to do with it.

phinds · 10 Dec 2015

whs said:

This is the size of my box. I don't think the SSD has anything to do with it.

Yeah, I didn't think the SSD should have anything to do with it, but can you change the size of that box? Do you see the control window? If your answer to both of those is no, then you have exactly the same problem I have. This is not the way magnifier is supposed to work and not the way it worked right after the build

OOPS. Never mind. I see the control magnifying glass in your screen shot. I don't get one. Also, my box is a lot bigger than what you show so I assume you made your that size on purpose, yes?

whs · 10 Dec 2015

I did not resize the box. And here are the options.

phinds · 10 Dec 2015

Ah, I guess "lens" must be the box, so maybe that's what I have but I want to choose full screen and don't have the control window the way you do.

When I first installed windows, I had full screen AND the control box. Now I just have the small box so can't change the magnification level and can't change it to full screen.

whs · 10 Dec 2015

Yeah, you are not the first person I have seen losing the magnifier. I really don't know how to fix that, sorry.

OvenMaster · 10 Dec 2015

When I click the magnify button once on the side of my Intellimouse, I get the window. I have to click and HOLD the magnify button again to get the controls, hold and drag to change the window size. If you hold the button that second time and don't get the controls, then my guess is that you'd have to at least uninstall and reinstall the Intellimouse drivers. Have you checked the button assignments in Control Panel -> Mouse?

phinds · 11 Dec 2015

OvenMaster said:

When I click the magnify button once on the side of my Intellimouse, I get the window. I have to click and HOLD the magnify button again to get the controls, hold and drag to change the window size. If you hold the button that second time and don't get the controls, then my guess is that you'd have to at least uninstall and reinstall the Intellimouse drivers. Have you checked the button assignments in Control Panel -> Mouse?

YOU GOT IT ! Thank you very much.

I don't remember ever having to hold down the button before and I doubt that I did it right after my build when the magnifier was working properly, but that sure does the trick.