Mouse dysfunctional: Unresponsive icons,windows and task bar

mjheever

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Jan 30, 2012
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Hi everyone.
This is truly the first time heard of this problem; Very abnormal in my experience.
This morning all out of blue my mouse started to give some problems- I couldn't click on and access the windows task bar, as if it was unresponsive, although I could click on my desktop icons, also ctrl+alt+dlt, Windows key and arrow keys didn't seem to do anything.
I then plugged my mouse into a different USB port, now new problems started to occur- I was able access the task bar but all my desktop icons was unresponsive (couldn't click on it) and I was able to access only some of my windows (Windows Explorer windows) which was already open.
I restarted my pc and then again other problems started to occur- this time it seemed as if my mouse was constantly double clicking, hence over each icon,menu and window the mouse moved over it opened it ending, thus up with more then 10 windows in front of me.
Assuming this is most probably a virus, I went on to format my pc completely (since my anti virus wasn't detecting any infections after a scan). After installing Windows 7 followed by the installation of drivers and AVG anti virus, the same problems started to occur again.
Occasionally for small periods of time the full functionality of the mouse (and keyboard) returns as if there was never anything wrong.

Could someone please please please help or advise me what to do about this problem.

Additional information:
OS: Windows 7 x64
Ram: 4GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP43-UD3L
CPU: Intel core 2 duo
Mouse: Razer Lachesis 5600dpi
Keyboard: Logitech G11

Thank you! :bounce:
 
borrow a mouse and keyboard that you know work on a different computer and try them out. do you still have these same issues? if usb try front ports or different back ports; also try ps/2.

try connecting your devices to a different computer and verify they work fine.

sounds like a windows hang/freeze up to me. but you said its reoccuring so it may be hardware (bad connections, bad ports perhaps) or virus/software as well.

i doubt it is your mouse or keyboard acting up but as i said before... hardware, software or virus.

you need to rule out as many things as you can.
 

mjheever

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Jan 30, 2012
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Thanks for the reply ssddx.

I have tried other mice and keyboards which I know definitely works fine on other pc and laptops.
Although I have not tried to connect them through the front ports- will give a report asap on that.

I have again tried to format my pc (without the network cable connected) but when I arrive at the window of Windows 7 installation the problem occurs again- hence I can't format my pc anymore since neither the keyboard nor the mouse can click or activate the 'next' button, although I can move the mouse pointer around but the click of the mouse just doesn't seem to communicate respond.

My mouse and keyboard works fine on other laptops and pc's, So I guess we can cross those 2 of the list?
 
correct. the mouse and keyboard are not the culprits.

the next thing to check would be to try and connect the mice and keyboards to your pc through ports other than the ones you had them connected to originally. remember that you may have to restart your pc for them to work!

worst come to worst you can plug your drive into another computer as a data drive and format it through windows a few times, running some virus scans on it.

what do i think it is?

-well could be a bad port, ports, or some other motherboard connection. i've not had this problem myself but i've heard of this issue.
-i suppose it could be bios corruption but i've never dealt much with that.
-perhaps it was a virus or some other bug which caused some corruption with drivers

fixes?

well for starters I would take out that hard drive and put another one in, if but temporarily to verify that it is not the motherboard or bios. if you have issues still then go to the next step, if not then its probably limited to that hard drive which you can wipe on another pc or do as you wish with.

if there is still a problem then you could try to flash your bios to the one you can download from the manufacturers website. i've never done this so i cannot give any instruction. if that fixed the problem then perhaps it was a virus or something else that caused corruption. if not see below.

if that didnt work then it might be some sort of short on your board or bad ports. however, it would be extremely odd for none of the ports to work unless something major burned out (which you would think would cause the whole board to not work). i suppose you could try to look at the board to see if theres any damage but now might be the time to see if the board is under warranty.

 

mjheever

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Jan 30, 2012
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I managed to pinpoint the problem finally! :pt1cable: But still it is extremely weird.

I did as you said in order to format my pc. After the format everything worked smoothly- I can click on everything and nothing is unresponsive. At this point of time I was using my brother's Logitech G3 mouse.

This morning when I thought all the troubles are gone I decided to plug in my Razer Lachesis 5600dpi mouse again, and BOOM, all of the sudden all the problems started to come back again- So it was definitely the mouse. But when I plug the Logitech G3 in again, it doesn't fix the problem no more- the problems stay after plugging the Razer out and plugging the Logitech in, wtf ?

So the instance I plug the Razer Lachesis 5600dpi into the computer all the problems starts to occur and there's no fixing it until I format my pc while using a different type of mouse... How is this possible? Is my Lachesis like a malaria mosquito that carries the virus or something haha?

Thank you for all the help and suggestions ssddx.
 
perhaps the drivers windows uses for the mouse are corrupted or contain a virus?

as you said... the mouse works fine on other computers. this means that its not the mouse.

you could try another hard drive or try again but wipe the hard drive repeatedly to try and clear it of data (it still retains some even after a wipe!).

if a new hard drive doesnt work then perhaps you should avoid using the mouse unless you want to continue to delve into the realm of strange computer phenomenon. i've seen far stranger things happen....
 

ss_56

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Jan 29, 2011
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My issue was very similar to what i read yours to be; i've posted my answer on other threads. sorry you had to go through that and still have the problem again. Hope this helps in some way.

I was all prepared to try a reinstall of windows7 when everything went back to normal, no ctrl alt del any longer. To be certain it was not a bug, i went ahead and paid for the full version of malwarebytes and on the first scan, it did find a couple of PUP's that MSE missed. MBAM support told me that their software dolesn't like running along side MSE so i uninstalled it. They further suggested i use Avast(which i do love) and together they seem to do a good job.

I said all that to say this; the mouse thing still lives! Then after reading online for hours, I thought to install a program designed to work with my Logitec thumb roller mouse. I played around with the different configurations, didn't find them useful so i set it all back to default. This program is called the logitec Setpoint. I've left this program running and have not had the mouse click problem since!

Perhaps, on any brand of mouse, you could find and install software/drivers designed specially for you mouse. Apparently the plug and play windows 7 default drivers are buggy.

Good luck all
 

Tich

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Sep 12, 2013
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I'm having the same problem on a HP Probook 4440s. I've checked all the drivers, ran malwarebytes and virus scans and nothing. The same thing works (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) to bring up Task Manager but it didn't work this last time. Also, the ability to click will start working again by Alt+tab to switch windows then back. It fixed it for a little while then it started again. It's not the mouse or keyboard. The taskbar doesn't respond to the touchpad either. I've removed the usb mouse and restarted the machine without it just to rule that one out. The laptop is running Windows 7 x64 bit.
 

Chris Harmon

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Apr 16, 2013
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I have been experiencing a problem almost exactly like yours. I can click on desktop icons but not the task bar icons. Same goes for windows...if focus is already set I can click within that window but as soon as I try to switch to another window(click on different app) I am unable to click on anything after that until I hit windows key on keyboard, type in "task" and open up task manager, then use the keyboard keys only (do not try to click around) to select more details>details tab at top>scroll down with keyboard to winlogon.exe and kill the task.

Once I re-login(windows 8.1) the PC will run fine until I accidentally press either mouse button 4 or 5 on my Razer Deathadder 2013. This has been plaguing me for months and finally I realized it's when I accidentally depress the 4 or 5 button on my mouse! I tried searching for my issue but I had no clue it was due to my mouse until tonight which made the problem hard to track down.

So the solution was easy, go into Razer Synapse Configurator(yes I keep it updated along with drivers), Select customize page, click button 4 box and select disable from drop down box at top. Do the same thing for button 5.

Hopefully this helps anyone looking for a solution in the future.




 

Chris Harmon

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Apr 16, 2013
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10,510
I have been experiencing a problem almost exactly like yours. I can click on desktop icons but not the task bar icons. Same goes for windows...if focus is already set I can click within that window but as soon as I try to switch to another window(click on different app) I am unable to click on anything after that until I hit windows key on keyboard, type in "task" and open up task manager, then use the keyboard keys only (do not try to click around) to select more details>details tab at top>scroll down with keyboard to winlogon.exe and kill the task.

Once I re-login(windows 8.1) the PC will run fine until I accidentally press either mouse button 4 or 5 on my Razer Deathadder 2013. This has been plaguing me for months and finally I realized it's when I accidentally depress the 4 or 5 button on my mouse! I tried searching for my issue but I had no clue it was due to my mouse until tonight which made the problem hard to track down.

So the solution was easy, go into Razer Synapse Configurator(yes I keep it updated along with drivers), Select customize page, click button 4 box and select disable from drop down box at top. Do the same thing for button 5.

Hopefully this helps anyone looking for a solution in the future.




 

MasterChef

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Mar 1, 2015
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I think I may have found a similar solution. My laptop was doing the very same thing just today, so I tried multiple methods. I tried a virus scan, malware scan, adware scan, just about every kind of scan, really. I also tried restarting my computer in safe mode, safe mode with networking, and safe mode with command prompt. But I finally found out what was causing my problems. I use a Zalman M400 optical gaming mouse with a dpi switch that interchanges between 800, 1200, and 1600 dpi and two side buttons that allow page shifting. I was looking at my mouse to see if there might be anything wrong with it, and I found that the button used for going back in one's web history was depressed into the side of the mouse and stuck there, and when I pressed against it, it provided me with a dull click in response. Seeing this issue, I got a small flathead screwdriver and very gently and carefully stuck the driver head under the button and lifted slowly. Once the button was freed and returned to its normal state, I found that I could close and interact with the approximately seven or so windows I had open. So in my case, it was my mouse that did it because the side button had been held down for so long. I don't exactly know what that effect is called, but that might be the problem for others with this issue.
 

adshishdev

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Mar 23, 2015
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I am having the same problem, I solve it by clicking the mouse wheel button but this is not the problem of mouse this problem occurs due to windows explorer
 

johnniewalker919

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Jun 21, 2015
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I wanted to say thanks for all of these answers regarding the mouse drivers. They solved my problem on my second computer where this happened. I wiped my first HDD to solve this thinking it was malware/virus, on the second one I just followed this guide below to wipe the mouse drivers and everything is working great!

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/remove-old...

My symptoms were:
-sluggish explorer: couldn't delete/modify files with mouse
-couldn't click but could use keyboard commands
-selective clicking on my taskbar with delay
-ctrl+alt+del would work and sporadically correct the issue.

 

Bookinst

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Sep 23, 2015
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I have had the Unresponsive Mouse problem with various Logitech mice (i have a collection) on and off for a long time on my Sony S series laptop. However generally the internal Touchpad would work ok. Over time I found that moving the Logitech Unifying Receiver to a different USB port fixed the problem - for awhile.

However i have recently purchased a Levono ThinkCentre with a super fast i7 CPU and 32gb of RAM. So i was not expecting the Unresponsive Mouse problem to occur on that machine. But it has and i have spent this morning reading posts on the issue.

The first thing i have learnt is that there is no one fix, just as there is no one mouse that gets affected. Swapping mice, running anti-virus software, etc may appear to work - but it is just as likely that the mouse was ready to work again anyway. One possibility is the following post from the Microsoft community forum "You could have software running in the background, like an automatic update to anything from Windows to your anti-virus software to a music player. That would be normal operation, but enough to temporarily slow the system down."

Well i have kept the Windows Task Manager up on my desktop with the Processes showing. The major CPU was the "system" and at first the mouse only seemed at get unresponsive when the CPU usage went over 3.7%. But after a while it did not seem to matter as the mouse worked ok up to 5% usage. Someone (i think on this forum) mentioned Internet Explorer and as i have been using IE a lot, even though i am on Windows 10, as i do do like Microsoft Edge, i have stopped using it. I will start using it again in a while and we will see if that makes a difference.

However for the moment i seem to have solved the problem by moving the Logitech Unifying Receiver from the USB2 port at the back of the ThinkCentre PC to a USB3 port at the front. I did that half an hour ago and have not since has a single unresponsive mouse issue since.
To support my theory i would point out that just about everyone having a problem has been using a remote Logitech Mouse. I suspect that a wired mouse would never have a problem and that there is merit in the argument that the mouse is affected by what is running in the background, but is stable provided the connection to the receiver is strong. Maybe Logitech have a comment or even a solution?

I hope the above helps with what is a very frustrating problem that is difficult to pinpoint as each persons configuration is different.
Dennis Turner