Windows XP Windows are not focusing

Hi all,

Been having some issues with a PC at work. I can probably get IT to come down and work on it, but they're slow and if you guys know a simple fix/have heard of this before then that would expedite things and lead to less loss of productivity. Plus, I'm just a curious guy and want to know what's going on.

The first problem is that when I open a new window it seems to not be entirely in focus. For example, if I open a new instance of Firefox I can use the address bar, look at webpages, scroll through pages, but I cannot use any of the menus (File/Edit/etc) or the icons in the upper right corner (minimize, shrink, exit) because when I hover my mouse over them, they do not come into focus and clicking therefore does absolutely nothing. If I take this window out of focus, for example by opening another window, and then bring this instance of Firefox back into focus by clicking on the tab next to the "start" button, I will be able to click the menus and icons at the top of the screen, and i will be able to focus on the entire window. This problem is persistent throughout all of the programs I use on a daily basis, not just Firefox.

Also, let's say after I do the above and then in Firefox I go to Help-> About Firefox and it opens its little information window. I will not be able to focus on this window but I will still be able to focus on the main Firefox window that I used to open this window (until I minimize and maximize again, at which point the smaller "about" window will be properly in focus and I can close it). If I click on the about window right after opening it, one of two things will happen. Either it will disappear behind the main Firefox window (basically becoming completely out of focus until I focus on it again manually) or it will persist, but the cursor will still focus on the main Firefox window behind it (so, for example, I could click on the about window and if it was hovering in front of the textbox I am currently typing it, I would get a mouse cursor that indicates I can click to start typing something).

If I open a program within a program, for example, if I were to open a PDF file in Firefox that opened acrobat within the main Firefox window, I wouldn't be able to focus on acrobat well at all, and the menus for save/print/etc in the acrobat instance will not work no matter what I do. I have been working around this by changing my browser settings to always download PDF files.

Any ideas guys? I just started working here 1.5 weeks ago and this has been going on since then. Any help would be much appreciated.

:confused