Need help with my mouse

So, here’s the situation: I’ve got this USB optical mouse on my second desktop, and believe it or not, only the buttons and the scroll wheel actually work. Clicking left, right, moving up, moving down—absolutely nothing. I even tried plugging it into a PS/2 port, and it's the exact same story. I’ve gone through four different mice now, all with the same result. Every other USB device I plug into this machine works perfectly fine. I’ve even dug into the BIOS to make sure everything is configured correctly—I even tried resetting everything to factory defaults—but it hasn't changed a thing.

Does anyone have any idea what on earth is going on?🤷

Look, I might sound a bit dense here, but you never really know until you check:

What kind of surface are you working with? An optical mouse is basically useless on something like a glass desk—shiny surfaces are always a nightmare for them. You’re much better off with something matte, even just a standard sheet of printer paper.

Also, I'm a little confused by this part:

"...I have a USB optical mouse..." followed by "when I plug it into the PS/2 port, it's the same thing."

I assume you're talking about a different mouse entirely, right? By the way, PS/2 isn't exactly "plug and play." If you hot-swap it while the computer is running, there's a good chance it won't behave at all unless you give the system a full reboot.

Anyway, hope that clears things up a bit!

The mousepad is specifically designed for optical mice (like a standard $13), and I’m using a PS/2 adapter to plug my mouse in. Basically, I'm using an adapter that has a USB port on one end and a PS/2 jack on the other.

Every single time I reboot the computer, it's the same story. The keyboard works fine, but nothing else.

Thanks, but you're missing the point here; that isn't the issue at all.

Is it actually possible that some component on the motherboard has fried, causing this entire failure?
I’ve dealt with my fair share of PC headaches over the years, but I have never encountered anything quite this infuriating.

Honestly, when I called the tech support desk over at Best Buy, they actually thought I was Milivoj Lulek!!!!

Here is some information that might be useful to you... try disassembling the unit and cleaning the laser component. I experienced the exact same issue once; after I took mine apart and performed a thorough cleaning, everything functioned perfectly again...

I finally tracked down the issue—it was just a dead mouse.

Thanks for all the help everyone, but now I’ve run into a whole new headache that has nothing to do with the hardware. I can't seem to uninstall macOS.