Sorry. I know you must be frustrated.
On a 3ds Max forum I read about a guy having an identical problem with an older version of Max. He fixed it by exiting the program & deleting his max.ini file. When he restarted Max it created a new "clean" ini file and his new objects behaved normally.
I know you reinstalled Max. I don't know if that overwrites an existing ini file.
If this doesn't help you might try these forums:
www.maxforums.org
http://area.autodesk.com
Search the archives first, then if you can't find a solution post a new question. Try to be very specific in the subject heading. it'll get a quicker response.