Windows detects no mouse clicks inside a small area of the screen

Question

A strange problem has developed on my Windows 10 machine. When I'm in Windows, if I click inside a certain area in the centre of the screen, the mouse click does not register, and if the cursor should change based on the content I'm hovering over, it doesn't.

Here is a demonstration of what I mean. In this GIF, I move my mouse into the area and attempt to select some text, but nothing happens. When I then move my mouse out of the area, the cursor changes to the correct "text selector" cursor and I can select the text fine.

Demo

The mouse wheel and clicks (left, right and middle) don't work while the mouse is in this area. There is a short delay after Windows startup before this problem begins, and it also doesn't occur on the Windows lock screen. I have two displays, but only my primary display is affected. How can I get my cursor to work properly again?

score 22 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 28 '17 at 17:45

22

If you minimize everything (so as to not accidentally close the wrong application) then click into the empty space and press alt + f4 it will close that invisible application that's running.

answered Oct 28 '17 at 17:45

Roger Hernandez

321

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 18 '16 at 15:26

4

The problem must've been caused by some sort of adware program, because I ran ADWCleaner and the problem was instantly resolved without the need for even a restart.

answered May 18 '16 at 15:26

Aaron Christiansen

724

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 02 '21 at 05:14

1

I had the same problem. In my case it was a malfunctioning of the AVIRA virus scanner and the area was in the top left corner of my screen. It obviously tried to open an ad window but the script got stuck.

I installed another virus scanner, uninstalled AVIRA and now everything is fine again.

It took me around 4 hours to figure out what was actually going on.

edited Nov 02 '21 at 05:14

Aulis Ronkainen

3,072

answered Nov 18 '17 at 10:05

vonjd

115

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 18 '16 at 07:13

0

Did you just upgrade to windows 10? Try installing the latest version of logitech setpoint
http://support.logitech.com/en_us/software/setpoint

answered May 18 '16 at 07:13

user3359820

110

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 21 '23 at 19:31

TL;DR kill explorer.exe and launch it back.

I had an invisible transparent window that was blocking ~3rd of my screen, that portion of the screen was not registering any clicks or mouse moves. (I think it was left behind by my Dell monitor tool that allows "snapping" a window to a portion of the screen, but that's not important).

To get rid of the invisible window launch the Task Manager via Ctrl Shift Esc, kill the explorer.exe process, and then launch it back again (also via "task manager - file - run new task").

score -1 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 23 '19 at 04:21

-1

I know this thread is old but thought that I'd add that I was having this problem and after reading this thread I went into my settings and turned off the pop up blocker and the problem was instantly fixed

answered Jul 23 '19 at 04:21

Angela

1

Windows detects no mouse clicks inside a small area of the screen

6 Answers6