Windows OS Randomly Can't Click Elements

Question

This is an issue that has been going on for several months and has only gotten worse as times gone on. For some reason, windows will not register my clicks to certain elements of the UI randomly. It most often shows up as being unable to interact with the taskbar, or the desktop itself. I will click on windows and it will de-focus on them as if I clicked off. The computer can sometimes react if I'm hovering over something but still won't let me click it. It will also act like I'm hitting to "go back one page" when I try and use internet browsers and windows explorer. Now the issue is happening on startup. So far the only temporary fix I have is to run windows File Explorer as an administrator. It will get the system running normally, but only for a little while, sometimes less than a minute.

The fact that rerunning Explorer affects it makes me think that an issue with that program is the source of the problem. I've looked in event viewer and can find no consistent errors. Windows itself has detected nothing wrong.

I've already tried the sfc and DISM commands, checking my drivers, and even reinstalling Windows. Nothing has worked.

Answer 1

I checked and it’s been on the clean boot configuration since I set it. Sometimes the error won’t show right away, but more often than not it’s there at startup.

Answer 2

Thanks for the feedback. From your report, the problem occurs even after a clean install of Windows, but after configuring clean boot it stopped occurring for some time.

Do you still have clean boot configured? If it still is, can you try restarting Windows and see if the problem reoccurs this time from the start of the operating system?

Answer 3

I will note that this issue was present on a fresh reinstall with nothing else installed or downloaded, but I did test the two boots. The issue was present right at startup for the safe mode, and while it wasn't there at start up with the clean boot, the issue returned within twenty minutes, all I did was run firefox and open a game launcher. I will also note that for the clean boot (and an attempted use of the startup repair tool) the PC didn't actually restart on its own. The screen went dark, but the lights of the computer and my key board stayed on. It eventually seemingly turned off, but then I had to manually turn it back on again.

Answer 4

Hi, my name is Anderson Souza, I hope I can help you with your issue.

You can start using two Windows modes indicated for identifying conflict between third-party software and services, or possible problematic drivers.

If the system files are all healthy now we need to check if any third party software or services are influencing the problem, there are two options to check this, Safe Mode and Clean Boot.

Safe mode starts Windows in a basic state, using a limited set of files and drivers. If a problem doesn't happen in safe mode, this means that default settings and basic device drivers aren't causing the issue. Observing Windows in safe mode enables you to narrow down the source of a problem, and can help you troubleshoot problems on your PC.

See the reference below on how to start Windows in Safe Mode:

https://support.microsoft.com/windows/92c27cff-...

A “clean boot” starts Windows with a minimal set of drivers and startup programs, so that you can determine whether a background program is interfering with your game or program. This is similar to starting Windows in Safe Mode, but provides you more control over which services and programs run at startup to help you isolate the cause of a problem.

See the reference below:

https://support.microsoft.com/topic/da2f9573-6e...

I recommend that you try these options when you have enough free time for experimentation, Clean Boot, for example, depends on third-party services and applications that start automatically to be reactivated gradually to try to identify a possible cause of the problem. But first, you need to confirm that the problem occurs even using Safe Mode and Clean Boot.