Windows 10: Mouse unresponsive to left and right click

Question

Mouse left and right click buttons unresponsive for periods of time seemly at random.

• Mouse tried: wired, wireless, wireless, Bluetooth, surface typecover cover touchpad and all possible combinations at the same time. Left and right click will be locked for periods of time. Persists through restarts. Persists through unplugging/replugging all mouse type device.

• Mouse scrolling and cursor movement is not affects (just right and left click does not work). Keyboard works. Touchscreen works.

• Sometimes mouse click works on taskbar, but not on any foreground applications.

• The only fix known so far is by starting an application called X-Mouse Button Control. It is able to "unlock" my mouse buttons. Before finding this solution, I needed to restart multiple times.

Answer 1

The solution to the problem is found!

It turns out the problem was mouse 'Button 4' in one of my mouse may spontaneously activate and stay activated. This introduces the observed behavior where it seems like left and right mouse buttons are disabled for all currently connected mouse and mouse connected in the future. The behavior which made the problem worse is the 'Mouse button 4' stays activated even if mouse wireless adapter is disconnected! Mouse button 4 also stays activated across reboots if the wireless mouse adapter is not disconnected during reboot. That's why we observed problem symptoms across reboots and disconnect/reconnect of a range of mouse.

The solution is to explicitly disable 'Button 4' through software for the semi-broken or all mouse. The easiest solution is to use a free program called X-Mouse Button Control. Autohotkey script to disable 'Button 4' should also work well.

Answer 2

We can try the following ways when the issue occurs:

1. Go to Device Manager, find the corresponding mouse name, right click on it, select Disable device and then Enable device.

2. Update or reinstall the mouse driver. Go to Device Manager, find the corresponding mouse name, right click on it, select Update driver.

3. When booting up, don't open any applications, do some simple text manipulation, see if the problem persists, and whether it's caused by opening a specific application. If so, uninstall newly install software.

4. Change USB Port.

5. Can the mouse work properly on other computers?

6. Check Mouse Properties Open Settings > Devices > Mouse > Additional mouse options. Mouse Properties will open. Click on Buttons tab. Check Turn on Click Lock option and click Apply. Then uncheck this option and click Apply again. See if it has helped.

7. Run DISM tool DISM tool is another command-line tool available in Windows computer. You can fix various corrupted system file with the help of this simple and free tool. To run DISM, open Command Prompt with administrator privilege and enter this command:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

It will take a few minutes to check everything and try to fix the problem automatically. Do not close the window if it is taking a long time.

8. Check in Clean Boot State. Perform a Clean Boot and see if the mouse left-clicks button works. If it does, then you will have to manually identify the offending process and see if you can uninstall it.

9. Restart Windows File Explorer. This is probably the simplest thing to do – and it helps sometimes. To restart Windows Explorer, you need to open Task Manager. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager on Windows. Then, use the down arrow button to select Windows Explorer and use the Tab key to select the Restart option. Following that, use the Enter button to click on it.

And other methods in this articles: Mouse click stopped working? Fix it using these solutions

If all the above methods are tried, but the mouse is really good and can be used normally on other computers, we can try to reinstall operating system.