Can't click on anything after quitting any Steam game

[Marvin T. Martian]

So, this has been happening intermittently for a while and I'm getting tired of it.

Basically, when I quit a Steam game and return to the Windows desktop (8.1 btw), I can't click on anything. I can move the cursor but can't click on anything and the quick-launch icons don't highlight when I move the cursor over them.

The fix is to Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then just click anywhere on the screen. I used to think I had to open Task Manager but it turns out that just clicking on the Ctrl-Alt-Delete screen does the trick.

After that I can return to the desktop and everything works fine.

I've done scans with 7 different utilities and I've tried disabling pretty much every process and it still happens, not every time but enough to piss me off.

Any thoughts?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Open Task Manager once in your OS, leave it open during games and such; then u always have a way to click that. Since u shouldn't lose the ability to click around with just Task Manager.

[Anubis2k15]

Happens to me also grrr

[_I_]

its a focus problem, alt+tab

[plat]

There's lots around online to review and see if anything applies. Like here, for example--can be done in Windows 8 as well as 10 and that's booting into safe mode.

https://forums.tomsguide.com/threads/my-cursor-can-move-but-cant-click-on-anything-but-the-program-i-am-on.434853/

Also, I have done clean boots when I was running Windows 8.1 and it resolved some things--mysteriously but I wasn't complaining.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

If those don't work, I'm sure there are other guides you can find in searching. I have also encountered this problem, it's very annoying. I changed some settings on my mouse and updated the graphics driver and so far, it's better now but not completely gone.