Are you encountering the annoying issue of “files get deleted when left-clicking”? Do you have any idea how to recover left-click deleted files? Now this post from MiniTool explains how to fix this issue and recover deleted or lost data with the best data recovery software.
Searching on Google, you will find that a lot of users are confused about “left mouse click causes deletion Windows 10”. Now you can see a true example:
Files are getting deleted automatically whenever I left click on them. Whenever I left-click on a folder or a file it gets deleted automatically. Then again when I try to recover my files from Recycle Bin, a pop-up comes up which says “Do you want to delete your files permanently". My icons are also disappearing from my desktop whenever I left-click on them. I have reset the Windows several times but it didn't work out. Then I decided to reinstall Windows but again it didn't work out. I have scanned the whole PC with Windows Defender but no threats were found. The problem still exists.
answers.microsoft.com
If you are the one who encounters the same issue, the first thing you need to do is to recover deleted files on your PC immediately. Before recovering lost files, you had better not write new data to the drive that contains lost files in case of data overwriting. Overwritten data cannot be restored even use data restore tool.
Recover Left-Click Deleted Files in Windows 11/10/8/7
How to recover left-click deleted files without bringing any damage to the original data?
MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a piece of free data recovery software, is highly recommended. It is a read-only and easy-to-use data restore tool designed for data recovery in many data loss situations, such as mistaken deletion, OS crash, hard drive failure, virus attack, and so on.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery not only supports recovering data from SSDs, HDDs, USB flash drives, external hard drives, and CDs/DVDs, but also supports recovering files from the desktop, the Recycle Bin, and a specific folder. So, if your files are lost when you right-click them on the desktop, you can choose to scan your desktop only which saves you much time.
Now let us see how to recover left-click deleted files with MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
Step 1. Download, install, and launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 2. On the main interface of this data restore tool, select the target partition that contains your lost files and click Scan.
Here you can also choose to scan the desktop, the Recycle Bin, or a specific folder only.
After scanning, all found files on the selected storage location are listed. To quickly find the needed ones, you can click Filter to filter out unwanted files by file size, file type, file category, and date modified. For example, if you only want to see pictures, you can tick the checkbox of Picture only as shown below.
If you know the file name of the wanted file, you can make use of the search box: type the file name in the search box and press Enter.
Step 3. Preview and select all needed files, then click Save to choose a storage location for them (it is suggested to select another drive to avoid data overwriting).
Tip: When saving selected files, you may get a message saying no free recovery remaining. This is because the free edition of MiniTool Power Data Recovery supports up to 1 GB of data recovery totally for free. Therefore, to recover unlimited files, you need to choose a full edition like MiniTool Power Data Recovery Personal Ultimate.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
How to Fix Files Get Deleted When Left-Clicking
After recovering lost files from your computer, now you can try the following methods to fix the “files lost after clicking” issue with confidence.
Fix 1. Clean the Computer With Antivirus Software
The issue of “left-click deletes files” may be caused by a virus infection. In this situation, you need to clean your computer and kill the virus using antivirus software. In addition, it is suggested to enable Windows Defender to eliminate viruses and malware programs to protect your computer.
Fix 2. Update the Mouse Driver
When your files get deleted automatically after left-clicking, you can try to update the mouse driver. Windows can automatically check if there are drivers available for new devices connected to your computer. However, the drivers of hardware that you’ve connected to your computer in the past aren’t installed automatically.
To update the mouse driver, you can refer to the following steps.
Step 1. Right-click the Windows logo key and select Device Manager.
Step 2. Expand Mice and other pointing devices and right-click the mouse driver to select Update driver.
Step 3. Follow the prompts on your screen to complete the updating process.
Tip: To save time, you can enable Automatic Driver Updates in Windows.
Fix 3. Perform an SFC Scan
According to the Internet, corrupted Windows system files can also lead to the “files get deleted when left-clicking” problem. In this case, you can try to run System File Checker (SFC) to scan for and fix corrupted system files. The operations to run SFC are easy.
Step 1. Type cmd in the Windows search box and right-click Command Prompt from the best match result to select Run as administrator.
Step 2. In the command window, input sfc /scannow and press Enter to execute it.
If this method does not work, you can try the next one.
Fix 4. Change the Windows Registry
The wrong Windows registry may also be responsible for “files get deleted when left-clicking”. So, you can try to change the default value of the Shell32.DLL file.
Tip: It is highly recommended to back up the Windows registry before modifying it because any wrong operations to it may cause your computer to crash.
Step 1. Press Windows + R key combinations to open the Run window.
Step 2. In the pop-up text box, type the command line regsvr32 /i shell32.dll and press Enter to continue.
Step 3. Reboot your computer and check whether the issue has been addressed.
Wrapping Things Up
When your files get deleted automatically after clicking, you can try the methods listed above to fix the problem and recover lost files using MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
If you have other good solutions to fix the matter of “left-click deletes files”, you can share them in the comment zone below to help more users. Thank you in advance.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Shirley graduated from English major and is currently an editor of MiniTool Team. She likes browsing and writing IT-related articles, and is committed to becoming a professional IT problem solver. The topic of her articles are generally about data recovery, data backup, and computer disk management, as well as other IT issues. In spare time, she likes watching movies, hiking and fishing.