All newly opened windows, must click on to navigate

Unless I am totally oblivious to this ever working as I presume, I think I am
missing the ability to navigate in new window dialogs without clicking within
the window first. I am unable to remember what changed since this has
started to occur. Most any new windows that are opened (Microsoft Office
products, Windows Explorer) require me to click on any part of this new
window to allow input from my keyboard or mouse scroll. For example, I open
a new Word document, and I am unable to type on the page without clicking on
the document first. Or, another example, I will open up My Documents, and I
am unable to mouse scroll or type letters (for letter named searching) within
the window until I click on the window first. The windows always open with a
solid-color title bar, and goes gray when the window is clicked for
navigation/usage.

You are referring to a feature known as 'activation follows mouse' or
simply X-mouse: just rest your mouse cursor on a window to give that
window focus.

There are probably many ways to invoke x-mouse. The one I know is to
install TweakUI, which has a check-off selection for that feature. Or
search the web with this search term:

windows xp x-mouse

for other ideas.
---
Leonard Grey
Errare Humanum Est

tgrwbr wrote:
Unless I am totally oblivious to this ever working as I presume, I think I am
missing the ability to navigate in new window dialogs without clicking within
the window first. I am unable to remember what changed since this has
started to occur. Most any new windows that are opened (Microsoft Office
products, Windows Explorer) require me to click on any part of this new
window to allow input from my keyboard or mouse scroll. For example, I open
a new Word document, and I am unable to type on the page without clicking on
the document first. Or, another example, I will open up My Documents, and I
am unable to mouse scroll or type letters (for letter named searching) within
the window until I click on the window first. The windows always open with a
solid-color title bar, and goes gray when the window is clicked for
navigation/usage.