Background
Recently I came across an issue in Windows 10 where I was not able to click on icons. This was a relatively weird issue. What was happening is - I could click either on icons on the taskbar or icons on the desktop but not both. Also, cancel, minimize buttons won't work. This happened when I switched my mouse from USB to wireless. Anyways there are few ways we can fix this which I have listed below.
- Restart PC
- Restart File Explorer
- Use sfc (system file scanner)
Restart PC
Well, why not? This fixed the problem. There is not a lot of problems that restarting cant fix. But this is associated with system reboot time which I hate. I tried this for few times but quickly got tired of it. Restart every time I switch my mouse? Bad idea.
Restart File Explorer
If the issue was with explorer we could quickly try to kill File explorer and restart it. Go to Task Manager by
- Ctrl + Alt + Delete
- Ctrl + Shift + Escape
Find Windows Explorer and kill it
You can select the process and click delete. Or right-click and end process. To start it back in the same task manager go to File -> Run New Task (You can Also to Alt+F to open the file menu and then click and then click 'n' for new task)
Once you open a new task window - enter explorer in it and press enter.
Your windows explorer will start again.
Use Systems file checker (SFC)
This is what I use nowadays to fix this issue. My guess is some files get corrupted when I switch mouse or maybe the driver is buggy .. who knows! But running the following command fixes all.
Make sure you run the below command as administrator from the command prompt.
- sfc /scanall
And the best part - No reboot required. This does take a couple of mins. But you can try browsing or something else at that time :)
