Chris,

Thanks. Yes, intuos2 tablet. And I've assigned both pen and mouse to PS with default settings. The problem with diagnosis is that I can't find what's knocking out the tool palette. Last night all was well until I ran a hue/sat adjustment, then no tools. Today on starting up, all was ok again, ran a hue/sat adjustment and no problem ;-) Something or a combination of things is knocking out the tool palette at some point in photoshop. Once that happens, all other adjustments and filters, etc. work, just no tools. No crashes, no error messages.