Windows 7 Shell Problems: Drag and drop, Windows Installer, etc...

There is probably one underlying problem that will solve all of this because it all started about the same time.

1. Drag and drop frequently stops working
Upon releasing mouse:

Releasing a favorite on the top bar of Chrome:

Dragging a picture and releasing anywhere (text also) in Chrome:

- Hitting ESC doesn't make it work again
- Dragging another item makes the previous "faded" one go away
- Hitting ESC while dragging stops the drag and doesn't leave a "faded" item, but doesn't fix the problem.
- Restarting the computer temporarily fixes the problem.

2. Bizzare Distortion in Windows Explorer window address bar

- Mousing over the weird-looking items next to "back" and "forward" causes them to look slightly different (re-rendering them) but they still look weird.
- Restarting the computer temporarily fixes the problem
- This is not a problem, but it may provide clues to what the underlying problem is.

3. Windows installer buttons "Next", and "Cancel" do not do anything upon click, but DO work on pressing ENTER. Then on the page to accept the license aggreement, the buttons (including the "Agree" radio button) are still un-clickable, but the Radio buttons don't work with ENTER (and next is grayed out, as expected).


- Already tried sfc /scannow, which didn't find any problems.
- Upon pressing ENTER on "Cancel" the confirmation box pops up asking if I want to close the setup. The buttons in that dialog box DO work on click.

4. Windows Update fails to retrieve updates to review, but still lets me install them from the first screen

Run a full scan with Malwarebytes.

Where did you get Win7?

Is this factory preinstalled Win7, which is a corrupt install to begin with. If so look at Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

Otherwise I'd consider a Repair Install if SFC /SCANNOW Command finds nothing.

I tried something: Creating a new user-profile to see if the issue persisted.
It did not.

So being fed up with the issue, I created a new user profile, transferred the files, but not the settings (unless they were very important).

The issue is gone, so it was something to do with a set of variables being loaded in AppData or something similar per-user.

I am running a MalwareBytes scan now.