My mouse is being recognized by my laptop, but it won't allow me to click on any icons. How do I fix this?

Is it a wireless mouse? If it is put fresh batteries in it.

I’m using the built in mouse on my laptop.

Update the drivers and/or search if the current ones are compatible. Have you ran windows update?

The pad on the laptop maybe dead or like @XOIIO said update went bad / need new drivers.

If it’s a laptop, as it seems to be, then the keyboard itself (of which the touchpad is an integral part) can be going bad. With my old laptop from work several years ago, it was the center keys that started to fail: i – j – k. At around the same time my cursor would “drift” on the screen, without any input from me. It would drift in one direction or another, up, down or to one side or the other (or combinations of up or down and to one side or the other) regardless of how steady I tried to hold everything.

The repair guy heard that, ordered a new keyboard for me, and replaced it at my desk in about ten minutes. That fixed my keyboard / touchpad / mouse cursor problems on that computer, once and for all.

Update: Apparently, the pad part of the mouse on my laptop works. I can click on links with that, but whenever you have to left click on something, that part doesn’t work. The right click works fine.