So I installed maya 2009 after a fresh install of windows 7 and my rotate tool manipulators seem to be invisible. Both my scale and translate manipulators are there, and I can rotate an opject perpendicular to the viewport with my middle mouse button. Also, I’ve checked to see if I accidentally scaled them up really large (bigger then my camera can see) or really small, so that isn’t the case. Someone suggested to me that it may be my graphics drivers so I grabbed the new ones for my 8800gt but that didn’t seem to fix anything. Is there any way that windows 7 goes and downloads improper drivers for it while I uninstall the old ones, right before I try to install the new ones? Any help would be fantastic. It’s really a pain to try and model with no rotate tool :(

**Update: Wierd? When I select an object and click on one of the rotation values in the channel editor my manipulators come up? But as soon as I click off the object and back onto it they disappear…

Try quitting Maya first, then go into ...documents\maya\2009\prefs\ and then delete your ‘windowPrefs.mel’.  Then start up Maya again.
This may work as this is the same problem I had, only my uv editor would appear white as well.

Author; Mike V Daigle