I went back to read the original post, and yes, what you say seems to be the case. Opening Component Options when a component is already select (any kind of component), gives you a working window for the rest of the session. Opening Component Options when no component is selected, gives you a non-working window for the rest of the session.
There is one thing you need to do to make sure the problem happens. First open Component Attributes, then open Component Options, and now select a component. The attributes change to show the change, but options doesn’t. If instead you open those windows when a component is selected, both windows work, and both update when you select a different component.
I found that there is a bug report about this, and it was being looked at again because of more recent reports. I am linking this post to the bug report.