Win 8.1, no mouse in the game panel

[Flyby]

I've come to believe that some MS win8.1 update is not compatible with this sim. Oddly, it worked flawlessly before. Then one day I fire it up (HSFX version first, then the stock version) after letting it sit for months, and suddenly no mouse. I tried a suggestion to chance the mouse setting in the {RTS] from 2 to 1, and that got the mouse working in HXFS, but only erratically. I could not select the item in the GUI I wanted; click "here", and another selection gets highlighted "there". I did discover that with this setting I could hit Escape, then Enter to exit the game. In the original version, no joy at all with that tweak. It's a shame, as I'd wanted to do some HyperLobby after a long spell away. I'll keep searching the nets. Surely someone has been there-done that (?).
Good luck!
Flyby out