Finder and Contextual Menus Won't Highlight

For some reason, menu choices no longer highlight in the Finder -- both those from the menu bar and in the contextual menus. The menus will pop up just fine, but there is no indication which item I'm mousing over until I actually click on it, at which point it flashes as usual and executes. In the meantime, though, it's tough to figure out which menu item I'm choosing because there's no feedback!
This only happens in the Finder and, oddly enough, only happens after a brief delay -- upon restarting or logging in, everything is fine at first, and then it stops working properly.

well, that's a good thing to know. i would try removing anything in system preferences > accounts > login items and see if that makes a difference. also, try moving your fonts folder from the user library onto the desktop and restarting. if that fixes it, then you will have to put them back (if there is a lot, i would do this in batches) into the other fonts folder which is recreated to determine which one is the culprit. if pulling fonts does nothing, just put the whole folder back and replace the copy with the older version. then i would try removing the preferences folder in the same way. let me know if any of these things works. [ 8 ) ]

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