[SOLVED] Help and Support window keeps popping up

Just brought the unit last August 2009.

Do you have a warranty on it? Depending on where you purchased (eBay or Amazon for example), you may have been offered a warranty. I always buy a warranty, especially if the item is used. In fact, it's not going to be long before I'm filing a claim myself on the one that I bought on eBay.

I'm having the same problem as pdsam55 and am watching these postings closely. I restored the hp 311-1037NR to factory settings using the D: drive (just a partition of sorts on the hard drive that should be isolated from the C: drive).

The problem is the help and support window will pop up when I click on the Start icon. Then, I try to click off the unwanted window and it won't go away unless I hold down the alt-key and click. I can also hold down the alt-key and click on the start icon and get the Start menu window. There must be a better way to remove this. I am intrigued by the possibility of a hardware problem. I bought the mini second hand and there is probably a good reason the previous owner wanted to sell. I'm going to try to test the theory of a hardware issue.

Thanks for the help! I'm really a Mac guy. I used an iPod on top of an eraser to hold down the alt-key for a while, but it's time for another solution.

solni, the situation with the original poster was that it would appear randomly and since F1 is assigned to open it I played a hunch but your situation seems different in that it only occurs when you click start.

I guess an easy thing to try is to remove Help and support from the start menu.
Here is my menu with Help and Support...

But if you right-click on the start orb you can pick properties and customize the menu.

Uncheck Help. And click OK and then Apply. Does this resolve it or does it still open up? Does something else start opening instead?

What is the make/model of your mini? Are you using a touchpad rather than a mouse?

The reason I ask, another thing you might try if you have a touchpad ...
Normally if you double tap a touchpad then it acts as a single click. I found it quite easy to accidentally double tap so I disable that option, I much prefer having to use the actual left click button. What I'm thinking is possibly you get a double tap on your menu? If you go to your mouse options you can look for a "tap to click" setting and uncheck that. See if that helps.

I restored the W7 Home with a bootable USB drive as mentioned in this thread. I didn't format, just restored the system onto the C: drive. The Help and Support Window continued to pop up each time I hit the 'n', 'b', or '+' key even after the restoration. The Trainable Man and other posts made me strongly suspect a keyboard problem. I downloaded the program Key Tweak and disabled the F1 key. Much to my surprise and delight, the offending window no longer pops up! It's too early to declare total victory, but it appears everything is working fine so far.

My gut tells me that there is an intermittent connection being made by the keyboard... perhaps something loose or a small conductive object where it shouldn't be making some keys produce the 'F1 instruction'??? My surprise is that the Key Tweak program actually stops this instruction rather than just the physical key.

Thanks for all the help! I think I'm going to like this computer even though I really am a Mac guy. It's taken at least three full days to figure this out... with your help!

Well, same advice I gave the original poster; if there is a defect in the keyboard so that you have to disable the F1 key to make the computer usable, then I would return it.

This KeyTweak does the trick..lol.. yeah its a great help. I have the same problem and I have done all the antivirus scanning thing but it didn't detect any trouble. Funny cause before I do the keyTweak, when I reboot my laptop and enter the bios setup the help window also pops out. So I also suspected that the F1 key has really a problem. Many thanks to you my problem was solved, for now.