Why can I not change any options in option inspector

Now that I have Mathematica 9 on a brand new computer, can someone please point me to what I am doing wrong

I cannot change any option in option inspector, they are all greyed out

I love Mathematica, but hate software that decides what is best for me.

What OS do you have?
If Windows it might be a problem with writing permissions in the program installation folder (i.e. “c:\Program Files\Mathematica\”) or in the user folder (i.e. “c:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mathematica\”). Have you tried running Mathematica as Administrator?

The first drop down menu in the option inspector allows you to change whether the option should be applied to the current selection, current notebook, or globally, or a specific notebook. By default it is set to “selection” meaning current selection. More options are available if you select “Current notebook” or “Global”.

thank you