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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?

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  • If you disconnect primary display does it occur in the other one? (if you swap displays does it occur on the same monitor, or still on the primary display?) When this started to happen? Did you changed anything on the pc around that time?
    – Máté Juhász
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 7:11
  • Maybe it is something like this or that.
    – Kamil Maciorowski
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 7:13
  • @MátéJuhász It started today, and I haven't changed anything. I'll test with disconnecting displays as soon as I can and then update my answer.
    – Aaron Christiansen
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 7:41

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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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.

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  • 1
    It worked for me. I was really wondering what could have caused it. How to detect that application?
    – Jayapal Chandran
    Commented May 2, 2019 at 14:51
  • 21
    This version was MY issue. Invisible window "on top". No malware, just SLACK. Minimized, then moved mouse across screen until right click gave "wrong" menu or back for "right" menu. To find app, I ran Windows Spy from AutoHotKey and again moved the mouse over desktop until Spy showed the name of the app (Slack). Stopped all Slack processes and problem disappeared. Generally I can run Slack with no issue.
    – HerbM
    Commented Aug 14, 2019 at 20:39
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    @HerbM It was slack for me too. Simply quit that from system tray. Everything works fine again.
    – bytestorm
    Commented Aug 20, 2019 at 18:18
  • 3
    I had the same issue with Slack as you...
    – suchoss
    Commented Oct 11, 2019 at 18:43
  • 5
    The same here, Slack was the problem. Killing slack.exe from task manager solved the problem.
    – Tides
    Commented Oct 14, 2019 at 10:06
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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.

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  • Set this as solution, to mark the question to be solved.
    – davidbaumann
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 15:39
  • 1
    @davidbaumann I need to wait 2 days before I can do that, because it's my own answer.
    – Aaron Christiansen
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 16:49
  • Reboot helped me too. Mine started after a reboot after a video driver install.
    – Davbog
    Commented Jul 25, 2019 at 21:24
  • Ran ADWCleaner and the problem disappeared.
    – Ivan Bilan
    Commented Oct 12, 2019 at 19:45
  • It was Discord for me. I went into Task Manager, force closed Discord, and voila, fixed.
    – Jax
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 18:07
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.

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0

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

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  • Thanks for answering, but no, I've been on Windows 10 for a while now, from a clean install.
    – Aaron Christiansen
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 7:39
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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").

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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

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