Nothing is selecting, all tools are pencil tools

[Maggie5C8C]

Hello all,

I have opened up a brand new Ai document and all of my tools when selected, defaulted to the pencil tool and I cannot select ANYTHING, as I get an error sound everytime I click on something. None of the layers seem locked as this is a brand new document so I don't know what's wrong! I am on version 28.0 of Illustrator.

I've tried restarting my computer, installing and reinstalling Illustrator, switching to a new version, resetting my preferences, and even running the Creative Cloud Cleaner tool to further reset Illustrator. I've attached a screencap of the issue (ignore the green box around the window, that was just from the screen capture software).

Please help me! I have never been so frustrated! :,(

[Bobby Henderson]

What are your computer system details (CPU, RAM, graphics card, etc)? Do you have any software running in the background that could possibly fight with Illustrator?

[Maggie5C8C]

Hi Bobby,

My specs are:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

GeForce GTX 1070

And no, I did not have any other programs open at the time that could have interfered with Ai.

[Monika Gause]

So when you grab the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle, you get that as well?

Is there perhaps a window open somewhere? An alert message? 

[Maggie5C8C]

Correct, all of my tools seem to not work, not even the hand or zoom tool will let me. Tried to see if I could find any error messages that could have been hidden offscreen but no such luck.

[Maggie5C8C · Accepted solution]

SOLVED!!!

I just updated my graphics card driver and now EVERYTHING WORKS?

I've been having the same issue seen here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/unsupported-video-driver-error/td-p/11824628 but for like a whole year and always ignored the message because everything worked fine.

Not sure why that fixed it but I'm glad to be back! 🙂

[Monika Gause]

Glad you solved it.

Thank you for posting your solution - this will surely help others.