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Mouse balls...depends on whether your mouse has one or not. Optical mice do not have them- if your mouse has a red light underneath it is an optical mouse and has no ball or rollers to clean.
Sometimes the cable, where it plugs into the computer can get loose and the mouse will stop working (both optical and ball-type mice). If it is a USB cable you can just unplug it and re-plug it and it may start working again. If it is a P/S-2 connector (round with several pins and a square-ish key inside), then shut down the machine, unplug the connector then plug it back in again. Re-boot the machine and see if it works now.
If you have a ball-type mouse and the cursor movement has become ERRATIC (but it moves sometimes or only in one direction), the plate on the bottom should rotate and let the ball come out. Wash the ball with some dish detergent, rinse and let dry. While the ball is drying, look inside the hole in the bottom of the mouse- you will see two thin roller axles and a spring-loaded rubber wheel. These will probably have a bunch of crud on them, maybe some hair rolled up in them. Use a fingernail and/or small tweezers to scrape the crud off and pull the hair out. Shake and blow to get the loosened crud out. Re-assemble and it should work again.
Sometimes, mice just "die". It could be a driver issue (or, more rarely a virus) but mice are cheap. Buy a new one and see if it works. If it does, then your mouse was dead. If that doesn't fix it then you have a more complicated troubleshooting situation to deal with, but you will have an extra mouse for when the original finally does die...and it probably will, eventually (especially if you have small children or older ones that play games that use the mouse for targeting).
Mice are too cheap to bother fixing them, in most cases.
Thank you,Zymer! I wound up buying a new one because I thought my husband was going to throw the computer through the window! Getting a new mouse seemed cheap compared to fixing the glass and buying a new computer..lol. This one works great and it was one of the least expensive. Is there a difference between expensive ones and the cheapies?
Thank you,Zymer! I wound up buying a new one because I thought my husband was going to throw the computer through the window! Getting a new mouse seemed cheap compared to fixing the glass and buying a new computer..lol. This one works great and it was one of the least expensive. Is there a difference between expensive ones and the cheapies?
There *can* be differences between cheap and expensive ones, you get what you pay for. A lot depends on how much you use it. Electronic parts differ in quality, cheaper items use cheaper components that may not last as long. If you only use the item occasionally, that may not be a consideration because you aren't going to wear it out quickly.
On the other hand, if you use it a lot, for gaming or graphics editing or whatever, you want something that is going to last longer.
Another consideration, if you use it a lot, is the quality of the buttons and how much force it takes to "click" them. I use the computer a *lot*, which has caused me to develop a problem with pain in my right hand. Having a high-quality mouse with easily depressed buttons significantly reduces the amount of pain I feel during long sessions. It is possible that if I had paid more attention to that sort of thing years ago, I might not have developed the problem at all.
Zymer, I have a technical question....at least to me it's a technical question.....the touch pad on my laptop is very --well--touchy for lack of a better word! Is there any way to tweak that so that it requires a little more pressure? When I type sometimes my thumb brushes it, and while I'm trying to do better, sometimes I've lost quite a bit of what I've done
Zymer, I have a technical question....at least to me it's a technical question.....the touch pad on my laptop is very --well--touchy for lack of a better word! Is there any way to tweak that so that it requires a little more pressure? When I type sometimes my thumb brushes it, and while I'm trying to do better, sometimes I've lost quite a bit of what I've done
You aren't alone, sometimes I hate those things. Some are unbelievably sensitive. They work by capacitance, an electrical charge is present and your finger acts as a ground to drain off some of the charge.
You have a couple of options, depending mainly on the machine and driver combination. I have *heard* that some machines *may* have a setting to reduce sensitivity (but I haven't seen it for myself). Open the Control Panel and go to Properties for the touchpad, see if you have that setting.
Second option is to disable the touchpad and install a regular mouse. Some touchpads actually have an on-off switch, but usually you will have to disable it either in the BIOS or by using the Windows Device Manager (assuming that you are using Windows).
Z , you and Forest appear to be the techies, and I am extremely thankful we have you both to help us!
I used to be a Computer Systems Analyst. I troubleshot mainframes, I made micro-miniature solder and wire-wrap repairs. I wrote in Basic, Fortran, Pascal, C, Assembly and Univac UYK-7 machine languages. But that was long ago and far far away.
Z , you and Forest appear to be the techies, and I am extremely thankful we have you both to help us!
You are entirely welcome. I enjoy helping...but my wife tends to get irate because I like helping more than billing...which can be a problem if it's supposed to be putting food on the table.
On the other hand, good people who I have helped and "forgot" to bill or waved off payment have helped me in return when I needed something.
I used to be a Computer Systems Analyst. I troubleshot mainframes, I made micro-miniature solder and wire-wrap repairs. I wrote in Basic, Fortran, Pascal, C, Assembly and Univac UYK-7 machine languages. But that was long ago and far far away.
Zymer is likely to be far more current than I.
Got started before the first "pocket" calculators came out, moved into radio and radar systems, made some detours into some completely unrelated fields, then got back into them around the time of the 286/386 machines and DOS. Most people may not realize it, but the old 486 machines had more computing power than NASA used to put men on the moon.
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