Weird Mouse auto click event

[Gowron]

I am running a Mac OS X El Capitan Host, and Windows 10 Guest. I recently purchased a new laptop, also running same Host OS, and proceeded to reinstall Virtual Box afresh but put brought my old saved VM. It seemed to be fine for a few days, but recently (as in hte past 36 hours) I am finding that my mouse pointer in the Guest OS sends a click event every time I open a menu. This is highly annoying and makes it impossible to get any work done because any hover action on a menu item becomes a click and this is wreaking havoc on my Excel spreadsheets and such.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on? I am happy to provide any further data required to debug this, I just don't know where to look aright now.

Thanks!

[socratis]

I recently purchased a new laptop, also running same Host OS

Please check that the mouse/trackpad settings on your new laptop match the settings of the old one.

[Gowron]

Unfortunately I do not have the old host laptop with me any more to do this check. Do you have anyspecific settings you think can cause this kind of a behaviour?

[socratis]

Do you have anyspecific settings you think can cause this kind of a behaviour?

No, I don't, because I haven't heard of that one before.
But since changing your laptop is the only thing that changed, I'd focus on that. Maybe the trackpad is the new force-sensitive one? I see "experimentation" (as in trial and error) in your near future...
Sorry I can't help you more than that...

[jsbisa]

You are not alone! I am having the same issue. I did not have any changes to my hardware. For me it started a few weeks ago after I upgraded my laptop from Yosemite to El Capitan and upgraded from Virtualbox 4 to Virtualbox 5.0.24. So I am not sure which of these 2 things caused it or if it is the combination. When I start the my Win7 VM, the mouse works great for sometime then it starts to automatically click on button/menu options as I move over them. Once this happens I have to restart the VM.

Since this started I have upgraded again to Virtualbox 5.0.26 snd upgraded the Guest Additions as well. It does not seem to be happening as often as on 5.0.24 (this could just be chance), but it is annoying to have to restart so often.

Jeff
Macbook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), 2.8 Ghz Core i5, 16GB
OS X El Capitan 10.11.6
Virtualbox 5.0.26

[socratis]

I upgraded my laptop from Yosemite to El Capitan and upgraded from Virtualbox 4 to Virtualbox 5.0.24.

That should be an easy one to check (sort of). Downgrade your VirtualBox version to the last one you remember not having a problem.

If you don't remember (without running VirtualBox), check your VM folders. Inside there there is a "Logs" sub-folder with 4 logs. The VirtualBox version that each log was created with is in the first line of every log. If you are lucky, an old log will contain the previous version of VirtualBox.

Uninstall the current version and install the old one. See if it changes the situation.

[jsbisa]

I had thought about downgrading VB, but I hesitated because I did not know what would happen with the Guest Additions and I was concerned about going from version 5 down to 4 possibly causing issues. But I am willing to try it this weekend since you think a downgrade will work.

I also just wanted to make this issue known so it could be fixed.
Thanks,
Jeff

[socratis]

To tell you the truth, I'm more worried if 4.3.x is compatible with El Capitan, rather about the GAs.

What you can do to play it safe is:

• Take a snapshot with 5.0.24.
• Uninstall VirtualBox and install the last known good one.
• Test it, and see if the issue is "fixed".
• Uninstall the old VirtualBox, install 5.0.24
• Revert to the last saved snapshot.

I do it all the time for testing purposes.

[Gowron]

I accidentally discovered a crude "partial workaround" that I now use to avoid frequent reboots (that were earlier required to reset the mouse to working order):

1. Make an edit in a XL file - that remains unsaved.
2. Go to Start Menu -> Power -> Restart
3. Restart will fail because Excel is waiting for user input. So you cancel the Restart when you get a prompt.

Lo and Behold, the mouse will start to behave itself. It seems to last a pretty long time, too

[chpeterson]

I am having this same issue on my virtual box (5.1.4, though it has been around for quite some time). I am running Manjaro Linux as host and Windows 7 enterprise as a guest
I can confirm that the workaround fixes the issue.

[chpeterson]

I would like to mention that I got the weird auto clicking to stop once I set "Drag'n'Drop" (under the General->Advanced tab) to Disabled.

[jsbisa]

Thanks chpeterson!
Disabling Drag and Drop appears to have solved the problem for me as well.

[gabriel B.]

Thanks chpeterson!
It's work for me too.