Try pressing the other mouse button, you'll get a pop up menu depending on what you're doing, this one appears if you're looking at a folder.

If when you turn your mouse upside down there's a Soho red glow you have an optical mouse.  If you haven't then you probably have a mechanical mouse and periodically have to engage in the cat with a wet paw shimmy to keep it working.  The shimmy shakes the fluff inside the mouse about a bit so the rollers move when the ball does.  Here’s how to remove the fluff. 

Shut down your PC or you will find the mouse has done something catastrophic whilst you were cleaning it.

Turn your mouse upside down.  There’s a hole about half an inch in diameter with a small rubbery ball coyly hiding in it.  Surrounding the hole is a flat disc with the hole in it.  On the disc are arrows showing which way you rotate the disc to remove it.  Rotate the disc, hopefully there will be a ridge or something you can get hold with your thumbnail.   Rotate the disc until it stops, usually about an eighth of a rotation.

Turn the mouse the right way up over your other hand.  What should happen is the disc and ball fall in to your open palm.  What will happen is the ball, which is carpet coloured, falls on the floor and rolls under the largest piece of furniture.  Retrieve the ball and give it a superficial brush, a dirty ball is not the problem.

Turn the mouse upside down again and peer into the hole vacated by the ball.  As long as a worried looking family of black beetles hasn’t taken up residence you should see two horizontal rollers at right angles and a vertical disc diagonally opposite.  The disc is spring loaded and keeps the ball in contact with the rollers.  The rollers sense the mouse’s horizontal and vertical movement.  Peer more closely at the rollers.  Around the middle is a grey band.  This is the problem.  The band is a belt of solidified fluff between the ball and roller, and the ball is now turning the fluff not the roller.  Get a small screwdriver or similar and scrape at the grey band along the axis of a roller until it disintegrates.  Do both rollers and then blow or brush out the fluff.  Reassemble, there are “tongues” on the underside of the disc that have to be aligned with slots in the mouse.  Smile smugly.

None of this applies if you have an optical mouse.  To avoid balls and rollers an optical mouse detects movement by looking at the surface it’s moving over.  For this reason it will work better on a textured surface than a very plain mouse mat.

A fine comment on human nature that the optical mouse was developed because we can't be bothered to clean our mice:)

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