Mouse click not working Workstation Pro 14.1.1 build - 7528167

[xopher8713]

This was working prior to a PC upgrade. I went from a Asrock z77 Extreme 4 motherboard with 16GB of memory and an Intel i5 3570k, to a Gigabyte Z370XP SLI motherboard 16GB of memory and an Intel i7 8700. I transferred my drives, did a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro Version 1709 (OS Build 16299.251), My VMs reside on a secondary storage drive so I opened them in workstation. I have tried reinstalling VMware Workstation, recreating the preferences.ini located in %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\, recreating the virtual machine and reinstalling vmware tools. I checked another VM and encounter the same issue. So I can CTRL+ALT to break input to the host and it will allow me to click one time, after that it acts as if the mouse buttons are not working. Has anyone ran into this or does anyone have anything I can try? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[xopher8713]

@etched. The "17 feet of logs" were requested by another user, they were just as annoying to post @peypey0212, Thank you so much this seems to have cleared up my issues, I greatly appreciate the assistance. If you would like, PM me your paypal info as I want to throw some cash your way because of how long I had this issue.

[thatoneITguy]

I had the same issue with Procrastitracker; it watches window titles but doesn't have any overlay that I know of. Killing the app made it all work again!

[thatoneITguy]

add procrastitracker to that. It looks like if the app watches for what screen is active, that breaks it too... unless this app is sending screenshots back to the dev... hmm.

[otys]

I have the same issue when running Spotify desktop app. Looks like it hooks to some global inputs.

[JamesVan]

I would hope that someone removes the 'Answered' mark from this post. Otherwise this same issue will continue to pop up over and over again.

I am having the same issue with v14 on a Win10 64-host. I have no games or Fraps or any of the other items listed installed on my host or guest VM's. This was any issue on a brand new install of Win 10 on the host with very few third party apps installed. It is happening on both my Dell 7510 laptop and Dell 7920 workstation. It is annoying as heck. At this point I can't afford to go uninstalling apps and drivers to see if any of those are the cause.

This issue has been reported by so many people, why hasn't VMware stepped forward with some help? How about some diag steps or monitoring tool to help determine what may be interfering with the mouse click. I am very close to down grading to v12 or moving to a different solution. I've used VMware since v2.0. There have been some struggles. But over the last couple of years the two biggest issues leading me away from VMware is the guest freezing up (been a problem since v11) and now the mouse click.

[6655321]

I had this issue and it was caused by a screen overlay application called Visor (a mod for the game Overwatch) - disabling that resolved the issue instantly.

For those experiencing this error take a long hard look at all running applications to identify if any of them are the cause.

The VMWare developers are not sophisticated enough to resolve the issue in their application and therefore you will need to identify and remove the offending application while using Workstation.

[RubensAmaral]

About the same issue here. It happens that on the guest window I may see all mouse over effects, but no mouse click actions.
My work-around is simple: I click on the VMware tool bar (or menu bar), and then mouse clicks start working inside my guest.

[banackm]

We believe that most of these mouse issues should be resolved either by upgrading to Workstation 15, or the latest Windows 10 update.  See the other forum thread for more details.

Re: VMware workstation 14 Pro loses Mouse Focus

If any users are still seeing issues after upgrading to Workstation 15, or the latest Windows 10 update, please let us know.

[dlo132]

I had this exact same issue  on my mac and what worked for me was navigating to "system Preferences" and selecting  "security & privacy" once there choose the privacy tab  and check the box for vm ware fusion under the section "allow the apps below to control your computer"...not sure if there a similar setting on windows 10 you can look into

[BigJoeBob]

I am having this issue with Workstation Pro 15.   When I drag to an external monitor, mouse works perfectly, when I drag back to my monitor on my laptop, mouse doesn't work.   When I open the VM with Player 15 mouse works.  I have spent several hours now researching this.   I didn't have this issue with version 12, upgraded the other day to Workstation Pro 15 introduced this issue.   Any other ideas.....

[SimArchitect]

Hi. Did anybody find a solution? Same problem here, can't make the mouse click with any of the three buttons be recognized inside of the virtual machines. Mouse pointer position is recognized fine.

[TronAr]

For what it's worth, I got a "compatible" problem and my only option was to go back to 12.

I did upgrade from 12 to 14 and a system I use to automatize guest operations based on the host running a java robot stopped working.

(positioning was ok, clicks would not work)

I followed all of the alternatives (update tools, try with/wo optimization, no overlay competing tasks, etc) to no avail.

[Wes123456789]

Still happens to me with Workstation PRO15.5.6 build-16341506.

Left click doesn't work but everything else works. Read through and tried all of the suggestions on this post and the only thing that works is a full power cycle of the VM.

[TronAr]

There is another thread where someone says it is a "security feature".

You know, it's a feature, not a bug ...

[jg185366]

The problem I was having was that if I was in a VM I could no longer switch away to another app on the host machine via mouse-click. I had to either use Alt+Tab to switch apps or power down/suspend the VM. When the issue was happening I couldn't even select menu items or tabs inside of Workstation Pro!

Despite my issue not being quite the same as OP's, I'm commenting here because @Eliforp's suspicion about it being an overlay was absolutely the culprit in my case. I usually run an app called HoldKey on my host machine, which is a small utility that displays an overlay if you hold down certain keys in order to display accented characters. If I quit or suspend HoldKey, my issue with switching away from my VM is resolved.

For what it's worth, this wasn't only affecting Workstation Pro, but any app run on my host machine as administrator. For example, if I run PowerShell as administrator, I could no longer click away from the PowerShell window to other apps in the background or on my task bar. I figured I would post my solution here since this is where I found the post that finally pointed me in the right direction.