"Click" doesn't work on my Macbook

[Skald]

Upon booting, my beautiful black MacBook looks normal, and the cursor moves normally. But clicking has no effect. This is true with the touchpad, and also when I use a wireless mouse. Sometimes the screen then freezes.

Keyboard short cuts and the arrow keys seem to work, but that doesn't (I think) let me do several of the troubleshooting suggestion s in the owner's manual. I have tried rebooting (with and without installation disk inserted) holding down option, or C, or D, or option-command-P-R.

I am willing to clean install, but have to click to do that.

The MacBook is 13 months old. Software up to date.

Hardware or software? Any suggestions?

For a few hours before this problem prevented me from using the laptop, I was getting erratic graphics, e.g. lag time between moving the pointer and its actually moving, trying to select one file but getting another when I clicked.

I managed to get to Disk Utility once (not sure how), and its default hardware test showed no problem (I could not click the box to do the longer test). I cannot get Disk Utility any more. Upon booting, I can sometimes get to the HD directory, but selecting Disk Utility (or anything else) and then hitting "enter" just prepares the file name to be renamed.

Many thanks for thinking about this.

 

[KoolStar]

Have you tried to use spotlight to open system preferences, then tab to the trackpad icon, spacebar to select, then make sure tap to click is selected, this may get you some click functionality to back up at least.

 

[Skald]

Thanks for that suggestion. I don't know how to access Spotlight with my problem. I can hover the mouse successfully over the right side of the toolbar and get menues for everything except Spotlight. When the cursor is over the Spotlight magnifying glass icon, nothing seems to call up Spotlight.

 

[BlueRevolution]

Spotlight is normally activated from the keyboard by pressing command+spacebar.

To open a selected application, file, or directory in Finder, select it and press command+O.

You've booted to the install disks, correct? You couldn't click there either? If that's the case, you have a hardware or firmware issue. My best guess is that the trackpad button is stuck, so it is constantly reading the mouse button as down. If it's already down, clicking again won't do anything – so it will ignore you.

 

[Skald]

Thanks for this additional help. In system preferences, the secondary clicks box is already checked. "clicking (dragging, drag lock" is not checked (and I can't change that). Your surmise about a stuck part seems reasonable. Guess it's time to take this in to an Apple store. Thank you.

 

[Skald]

The Latest

Thank you, CoolStar and Blue Revolution. Because the laptop briefly fixed itself, the stuck-click theory seemed appealing. I might have re-stuck it by a ham-fisted use of the click bar. My wife for some bizarre reason thinks that I often (to use her verb) brutus things without really being aware of it.

When the click failed again, I thought that I might try to help unstick it. I used the vacuum cleaner suction to try to lift the bar a bit. I do not know if that was effectual or not, but on rebooting the click function had returned. I plan to not even touch that bar again, using my trust Logitech wireless mouse instead, until I get my blood pressure down.

 

[geoffreak]

Just go to the Apple store and get it fixed

 

[KoolStar]

Does the button make a clicking sound.

 

[Skald]

No clicking sound on the laptop

My wireless, on other hand, wakes up the neighbors.

I have an appointment with the Apple store genius bar (which I assume is in this case a way station before the repair cavern). I hope they charge less than auto mechanics per hour.

I learned that the Manhattan Apple Store is open 24/7/365. The first appointment available was 3 a.m. Sunday. What a country.

 

[geoffreak]

I learned that the Manhattan Apple Store is open 24/7/365. The first appointment available was 3 a.m. Sunday. What a country.

Nice. I live within walking distance of an Apple store, but it closes at 10pm. It is located in a mall so it is a PITA after around 8pm when all the stores start closing and you can't get in the mall.