Menu Selection Gets Stuck on Screen

At work,

when I chose an item in a right click menu it stuck on screen,
It dissappeared when I locked and then unlocked the pc,
but reappeared the next time I selected an item. This does not work in windows 7 (and maybe 8), the quick workaround there is Start > Run :

tskill dwm

Right clicking the desktop and closing the menu also helped, but this were only workarounds.

I finally solved it :
Go into Windows Performance Options and de-select the option for "Fade out menu items after clicking."

In Vista, you can find it by right clicking My Computer > Properties > Advanced system settings (link on the left) > Advanced (tab) > Performance settings (button) > Visual effects (tab).

To cure it one in windows 7 you can set the corresponding monitor from 32 bit to 16 bit and back again, to remove one item. If it keeps happening, use the above solution.

Windows Needs to Format this device when you plug in usb stick

I recently bought myself a Sandisk Cruzer stick for on the road.
Everything worked fine untill windows (vista) began to complain when I plugged in the stick : Windows needs to format this device (or something very similar)

Having some data on the stick I didn't want to format it, so I started looking around. I found the solution :

With the usb stick plugged in (it does not really matter but it makes it easier)
go to Start / Control Panel
Here depending on whether you have the classic view or not :
Classic view : System / Device manager (left side)
Standard view : Hardware and Sound / Device manager / View hardware and devices

Here find the usb stick driver in the device manager (should be under Disk Drives),
be sure to select the correct one!
Right click it and choose uninstall

After this unplug and replug the usb stick, vista will now install 'new' drivers and that did the trick for me.

I also read somebody who had to redo this when he restarted vista, but in my case this was not needed.