This problem has been off and on for quite some time - almost a year. When I click on things sometimes it works, sometimes it double clicks, sometimes there's no effect. It can be extremely hard and time consuming to drag and drop files and objects. I use a USB optical mouse, on a desktop computer. Recently, the problem has become worse.

I read somewhere that it's because I use AMD (an A series APU 4 cores), but I had the problem before I upgraded from Intel (core 2 duo). I've only had the new APU since October. It seems to be worse since upgrading my OS from 17.1 to 17.2. I never had this problem in Linux mint 13. I looked on Linux mint specific forums but all the problems were with touchpads and on laptops. Also, I tried suggestions that worked for those using laptops and touch pads. I removed the fglrx-core and all associated AMD drivers. I rebooted and nothing has really changed. It is still hit or miss. BTW, I cannot use the drivers from AMD website, it totally effed up my system and I almost had to reinstall my OS when I installed their drivers; so, never again!

It's frustrating, because I have to do a lot of copying and pasting, and sometimes I cannot capture short blocks of text, I have to copy everything and then delete the unwanted text, one character at a time, which is both annoying and time consuming, even in my word processing programs! It's very strange and I don't know what to do anymore. I have wasted so much time trying to get work done because of this issue. I'm hoping that someone here has solved this issue, or know what the heck is going on at least. Any ideas and trouble shooting tips would be appreciated.

just use some ratpoison!

only joking.

though reducing mouse usage does increase efficiency.

anyhow, have you tried a different mouse?