What would cause click events to stop working in Internet Explorer 11?

Question

I'm sorry for the vague question, but I'm dealing with a very vague bug.

Sometimes, in IE 11, my app just "dies." The pointer changes when you hover over a clickable element, but left-clicking does nothing, nor does right-clicking. Hover also stops working... if you hover over an element that has :hover CSS, the :hover CSS doesn't work. This only happens on specific pages, but not all the time... sometimes you load the page and clicking works, sometimes you load the page and clicking doesn't work.

If I hit refresh, clicking starts to work again.

If I use the keyboard to tab to an element and press "enter," I am able to follow a link I wasn't able to click on.

No errors in the console window.

IE version is RTM 11.0.9600.16428, running on Windows Server 2008 R2. I think it has also happened on Windows 7 and 7 Pro machines. I can't reproduce it on my Windows 8.1 machine with IE 11.0.9600.17728--clicking works consistently there.

Is it possible that, somehow, all the click handlers are getting taken off of everything? Even the window itself? That would explain why right-click stops working as well as left... I can't even get a context menu to use "View Source" or "Inspect Element." Nothing!

Answer 1

In case anyone else stumbles upon this: The problem turned out to be a bug specific to IE 11 for Win 7/Server 2008 R2. It doesn't happen in IE 11 for Win8.1+ or for any other browser.

Here's more info on the bug: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/issues/205775/

I "fixed" it with one line of CSS:

use {
    pointer-events: none;
}