Tool selection bug in Adobe Fireworks CS3

I had a really annoying issue today with Adobe Fireworks CS3, I had to modify an image, but I couldn’t use any of my tools except for the select tool.  It’s a really weird bug when you first encounter it, basically you can’t select anything in the left toolbar, but the right side works, and the top menu.

Background

Well, after some searching around it seems to be a known bug with Fireworks.  Let me explain, I have a simple two monitor setup running on Windows 7, monitor 1 has a resolution of 1920×1200, monitor 2 has a resolution of 1920×1080.  The last time I used Fireworks, I used it on my second monitor, did some stuff, and exited on that second monitor.  Today, I opened it, moved the Fireworks window to my main monitor, opened the image to modify, and found out the tools didn’t work.

Bug

The bug is that Fireworks and Windows 7 seem to have an issue with communicating the mouse coordinates with the screen resolution settings.  When you first start Fireworks, it will receive the correct dimensions and coordinates of the window from Windows, however once you start moving, resizing or maximizing, all is lost, and Fireworks doesn’t know where your mouse pointer is.

Solution

Put Fireworks where you want it.  Exit the program.  Start it again. Do your thing, and don’t move the window.  I’ve noticed that it still doesn’t seem to work while maximized, so I just make it as large as possible.

Reference: http://www.webmasterworld.com/website_technology/4250377.htm