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Mouse Frozen in Upper Left Corner

I am unable to access my cordless mouse beyond clicking the Apple menu in the upper left corner of my iMac (OS 10.11.6 El Capitan). The corded keyboard works in that I can choose items in that Apple menu and I am able to use Ctrl Alt Escape to use Force Quit, but cannot access the pointing device! This started a few days ago, but after a few minutes the mouse became functional again. Not today. Nothing I try has worked: Shut down and started up again, changed to new batteries in the mouse, turned mouse off to disconnect and back on to reconnect, but nothing changes. I thought maybe I had a conflict between Webroot SecureAnywhere and PC Matic but I am unable to uninstall either of them to troubleshoot that. I keep quitting Webroot using either Force Quit or just Cmd Q from the Cmd Tab icon list, but Webroot has automatic startup so it keeps restarting itself. Help!!

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jan 18, 2020 8:44 AM

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Jan 18, 2020 10:44 AM in response to MacFossil

Add-on anti-malware is pragmatically indistinguishable from malware that just doesn’t want to share the system. Both can cause weird problems. There can be other potential surprises with anti-malware, too.


Boot into Safe Mode and test, then remove the add-ons per the vendors’ instructions and reboot test. See if things work better.


As for the add-on mouse, that could be a problem with macOS, with the add-on anti-malware or add-on cleaners or add-on VPN clients or such, with the add-on apps necessary for that mouse—some mice and some mice-related apps have issues, some have updates, and what might apply here would be more apparent with some info on the mouse vendor and model—and some mice just fail.


We don’t know what you’ve tried, what you haven’t, nor what mouse or other add-ons might be present her. Not unless those details are included in what’s been posted.


To post an inventory of what’s present, download and run EtreCheck, open a new reply here, press the button that looks like a printed page to get a text input box big enough to paste the hardware and software configuration report here. That’ll usually provide a good overview of what’s installed and what’s not, and sometimes can find unrelated issues such as failing hardware.

Mouse Frozen in Upper Left Corner

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