Program previews popup then disappear quickly

I'm sorry, I don't know the technical language to describe this problem. When I click on the icon to display, say, all open programs of a type the previews pop up and then fall down again within about a second. The same thing happens with alt-tab... pressing alt-tab brings up the usual screen, but it disappears within a second preventing me from tabbing through anything even though I'm holding down alt.

I'm going to install a keystroke monitor to see if something's stuck without me knowing it, but I don't get the keyboard failures on startup that I should get if that were true.

Welcome to the Seven Forums!

See if you can use the operating system's on screen keyboard to test things out.

Thanks for the tip. I tried this based on your suggestion but it didn't give me any novel insights. I held down 'alt' on the normal keyboard and pressed 'tab' on the virutal one... Same problems...

What happens if you do it all via the virtual keyboard?

Clicking once on alt holds it down until you click on it again.

click on alt (which holds it down)

click on tab

Wait several seconds

Did the app choices stay on the screen until you clicked on alt again?

Okay, that's interesting. Because clicking once on alt does NOT hold it down for me till I can click it again. The same is true of control, function and shift, incidentally.

Unplugging the mouse doesn't seem to help either.

Incidentally, pressing the alt key doesn't seem to cause any other keys to press down either, as far as onscreen keyboard can show. I mention this because one solution to a similar issue said that pressing alt caused their control key to press down as well. That's not what's happening to me.

I was messing around with sticky keys and themes.... turning on sticky keys fixed the problem but I wasn't able to type. I set everything back the way it was and restarted the computer. The original issue seems resolved. Odd...

Glad you got it sorted - thanks for posting back.

Maybe this thread will help another person solve this issue on their computer some day