The Mouse That Would Not DIE!

[BullKurtz]

For months the original mouse I got with my Dell Dimension E521 had been acting up. It would highlight part of something I wanted to copy and stop in the middle or the highlight would vanish. The scroll wasn't right either. And in the online checkers game I play, it was getting harder to drag my pieces around. And then a couple days ago, the cursor VANISHED.

This is an old rollerball mouse with a USB port connection.....I unplugged the cord and plugged it back in....the cursor reappeared....whew. Then it vanished again.....oh oh. I vaguely remember how to do "mouse keys" on the keyboard but that was 13 years ago....not a chance. So I call Best Buy for the geek squad and the guy tells me it's probably the mother-board. Hmmmm....so I head down there and buy his cheapest optical mouse for $9.20. After finally ripping the blister pack to shreds I plug it in....HYPER CURSOR....damn the thing was like Pong on meth and bath salts.

It worked but I didn't like it or the red light under it.....what was going on in there? So I took my old mouse apart....it was disgusting...full of hair, dirt, goo, and who knows what else after 7 years of getting pushed around on an oak table with the snacks that accompanied my time on online. I'd kept the ball and rollers clean so how the hell did the crud migrate to the front of the mouse?

So I start brushing out the crud with an old toothbrush when it falls apart, pieces landing on the floor...now what? I picked up the two pieces that were where nearby but the scroll wheel was missing....found it after a couple hours of searching some 15 feet away under a shoe in the corner....grrrr..then the odd shaped piece of wire I'd found disappeared....another extensive search....found it stuck in the tread on the bottom of my shoe....miraculously it wasn't bent out of shape and ruined....figured out how the parts went back together....clean now.....tightened the little screw on the bottom, plugged it back in it's USB port and VOILA....it works like the day I first plugged it in...

Took the replacement mouse back to Best Buy, got my refund and blew it on a 12 roll pack of Northern toilet paper at Wally World. What's the moral of the story? Hell if I know but I do know this...don't be afraid to try to fix something that you can replace for $9...especially electronics....I bet the dumps are full of stuff that would still have worked if somebody had just looked into what had happened to them. My old mouse and I had had a blast online....we'd learned and taught many things together....and now my pal is back with me good as new.....I hope.

 

[ChrisL]

For months the original mouse I got with my Dell Dimension E521 had been acting up. It would highlight part of something I wanted to copy and stop in the middle or the highlight would vanish. The scroll wasn't right either. And in the online checkers game I play, it was getting harder to drag my pieces around. And then a couple days ago, the cursor VANISHED.

This is an old rollerball mouse with a USB port connection.....I unplugged the cord and plugged it back in....the cursor reappeared....whew. Then it vanished again.....oh oh. I vaguely remember how to do "mouse keys" on the keyboard but that was 13 years ago....not a chance. So I call Best Buy for the geek squad and the guy tells me it's probably the mother-board. Hmmmm....so I head down there and buy his cheapest optical mouse for $9.20. After finally ripping the blister pack to shreds I plug it in....HYPER CURSOR....damn the thing was like Pong on meth and bath salts.

It worked but I didn't like it or the red light under it.....what was going on in there? So I took my old mouse apart....it was disgusting...full of hair, dirt, goo, and who knows what else after 7 years of getting pushed around on an oak table with the snacks that accompanied my time on online. I'd kept the ball and rollers clean so how the hell did the crud migrate to the front of the mouse?

So I start brushing out the crud with an old toothbrush when it falls apart, pieces landing on the floor...now what? I picked up the two pieces that were where nearby but the scroll wheel was missing....found it after a couple hours of searching some 15 feet away under a shoe in the corner....grrrr..then the odd shaped piece of wire I'd found disappeared....another extensive search....found it stuck in the tread on the bottom of my shoe....miraculously it wasn't bent out of shape and ruined....figured out how the parts went back together....clean now.....tightened the little screw on the bottom, plugged it back in it's USB port and VOILA....it works like the day I first plugged it in...

Took the replacement mouse back to Best Buy, got my refund and blew it on a 12 roll pack of Northern toilet paper at Wally World. What's the moral of the story? Hell if I know but I do know this...don't be afraid to try to fix something that you can replace for $9...especially electronics....I bet the dumps are full of stuff that would still have worked if somebody had just looked into what had happened to them. My old mouse and I had had a blast online....we'd learned and taught many things together....and now my pal is back with me good as new.....I hope.

Most of the new mouses are controlled by laser. That's what the red light is and why it has no balls.

 

[BullKurtz]

Well, the red light on an optical mouse is an LED light which is actually a tiny camera from what I understand....the neat thing about the Best Buy USB model is that it gets it's power (5v) from the CPU so it requires no batteries...both optical and laser meese use RF technology which I understand from selling wireless alarm systems. The Infrared beams are similar to how motion-detectors work, sending information back and forth between the transmitter and receiver. The laser mouse is more expensive because of the DPI (dots per inch?) of screen which is what the gamers need to zap zombies or some shit.

Update....my cursor vanished again, dang it. So I pulled the plug from it's USB port and plugged it back in ....so far so good. I know that the cord is crimped where it enters the mouse from age....instead of the wires grounding on an outside surface, they're grounding inside the sheathing so I'm being very gentle with Mr. Mouse and not moving him around like I always have.....fingers crossed.

 

[Mr. H.]

This is the most amusing thread that I've seen in quite a while.

 

[XPostFacto]

I have had 2 wireless mice, and they failed on me. Then again, I'm a gamer and using the mouse to sword fight doesn't make for a long life for them. I prefer using the wired USB kind.

 

[BullKurtz]

UPDATE....I finally pushed the USB connection wire as hard as I could into the front of the mouse...and it seems to have worked....haven't lost my cursor for two days and the operation is quick and crisp!

 

[XPostFacto]

I still use a wireless mouse with my laptop. Whenever I hear 2 bells go off in my speakers, it means that the mouse has dropped out. I just unplug the USB receiver and then stick it back in, and I have the mouse for however long it wants to last, which is usually about 5 minutes or even less. I have gotten to using the touch pad now, and I hate touch pads with a passion. Lately, you can't seem to find a wired mouse. Best Buy, Walmart, and even Rite Aid keep pushing the wireless junk.

 

[BullKurtz]

I still use a wireless mouse with my laptop. Whenever I hear 2 bells go off in my speakers, it means that the mouse has dropped out. I just unplug the USB receiver and then stick it back in, and I have the mouse for however long it wants to last, which is usually about 5 minutes or even less. I have gotten to using the touch pad now, and I hate touch pads with a passion. Lately, you can't seem to find a wired mouse. Best Buy, Walmart, and even Rite Aid keep pushing the wireless junk.

My Best Buy has a good stock of them....my next caper is speakers....I have one working and one not...the geek squad guy said that tells him the driver is good but there's a capacitor shot in the bad speaker...they have what I need for around $15...the set I have (Harmon Kardon) I got with my W98 computer in 1999....not bad.....15 years.

 

[Moonglow]

For months the original mouse I got with my Dell Dimension E521 had been acting up. It would highlight part of something I wanted to copy and stop in the middle or the highlight would vanish. The scroll wasn't right either. And in the online checkers game I play, it was getting harder to drag my pieces around. And then a couple days ago, the cursor VANISHED.

This is an old rollerball mouse with a USB port connection.....I unplugged the cord and plugged it back in....the cursor reappeared....whew. Then it vanished again.....oh oh. I vaguely remember how to do "mouse keys" on the keyboard but that was 13 years ago....not a chance. So I call Best Buy for the geek squad and the guy tells me it's probably the mother-board. Hmmmm....so I head down there and buy his cheapest optical mouse for $9.20. After finally ripping the blister pack to shreds I plug it in....HYPER CURSOR....damn the thing was like Pong on meth and bath salts.

It worked but I didn't like it or the red light under it.....what was going on in there? So I took my old mouse apart....it was disgusting...full of hair, dirt, goo, and who knows what else after 7 years of getting pushed around on an oak table with the snacks that accompanied my time on online. I'd kept the ball and rollers clean so how the hell did the crud migrate to the front of the mouse?

So I start brushing out the crud with an old toothbrush when it falls apart, pieces landing on the floor...now what? I picked up the two pieces that were where nearby but the scroll wheel was missing....found it after a couple hours of searching some 15 feet away under a shoe in the corner....grrrr..then the odd shaped piece of wire I'd found disappeared....another extensive search....found it stuck in the tread on the bottom of my shoe....miraculously it wasn't bent out of shape and ruined....figured out how the parts went back together....clean now.....tightened the little screw on the bottom, plugged it back in it's USB port and VOILA....it works like the day I first plugged it in...

Took the replacement mouse back to Best Buy, got my refund and blew it on a 12 roll pack of Northern toilet paper at Wally World. What's the moral of the story? Hell if I know but I do know this...don't be afraid to try to fix something that you can replace for $9...especially electronics....I bet the dumps are full of stuff that would still have worked if somebody had just looked into what had happened to them. My old mouse and I had had a blast online....we'd learned and taught many things together....and now my pal is back with me good as new.....I hope.

Most of the new mouses are controlled by laser. That's what the red light is and why it has no balls.

It's an LED, not a laser, hunny....

 

[Moonglow]

I have had 2 wireless mice, and they failed on me. Then again, I'm a gamer and using the mouse to sword fight doesn't make for a long life for them. I prefer using the wired USB kind.

And they suck battery life so quick...I even used rechargeable but gave up on the constant maint....

 

[BullKurtz]

It's an LED, not a laser, hunny....

The new high DPI ones are lasers.

 

[Mr. H.]

It's an LED, not a laser, hunny....

The new high DPI ones are lasers.

Like, *pew!* *pew!* lasers, or optical lasers.

 

[Moonglow]

It's an LED, not a laser, hunny....

The new high DPI ones are lasers.

That's why they are more than 9 dollars....

 

[BullKurtz]

That's why they are more than 9 dollars....

You just figure that out did ya Bart?

 

[Moonglow]

That's why they are more than 9 dollars....

You just figure that out did ya Bart?

Nah, I've got about a dozen different types. I even have an old bar code reader mouse that had the old CAT-9 plug and is shaped like a mouse...My wife used it to do the old secret shopper type of operation on our old Dell we had with windows 95....

 

[BullKurtz]

You just figure that out did ya Bart?

Nah, I've got about a dozen different types. I even have an old bar code reader mouse that had the old CAT-9 plug and is shaped like a mouse...My wife used it to do the old secret shopper type of operation on our old Dell we had with windows 95....[/QUOTE]

I had one of those too! Came with my Dell W98 machine...it was actually shaped like a mouse with a nose and ears, right? I found it a couple years ago and no idea what the hell it was or what it did.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

For months the original mouse I got with my Dell Dimension E521 had been acting up. It would highlight part of something I wanted to copy and stop in the middle or the highlight would vanish. The scroll wasn't right either. And in the online checkers game I play, it was getting harder to drag my pieces around. And then a couple days ago, the cursor VANISHED.

This is an old rollerball mouse with a USB port connection.....I unplugged the cord and plugged it back in....the cursor reappeared....whew. Then it vanished again.....oh oh. I vaguely remember how to do "mouse keys" on the keyboard but that was 13 years ago....not a chance. So I call Best Buy for the geek squad and the guy tells me it's probably the mother-board. Hmmmm....so I head down there and buy his cheapest optical mouse for $9.20. After finally ripping the blister pack to shreds I plug it in....HYPER CURSOR....damn the thing was like Pong on meth and bath salts.

It worked but I didn't like it or the red light under it.....what was going on in there? So I took my old mouse apart....it was disgusting...full of hair, dirt, goo, and who knows what else after 7 years of getting pushed around on an oak table with the snacks that accompanied my time on online. I'd kept the ball and rollers clean so how the hell did the crud migrate to the front of the mouse?

So I start brushing out the crud with an old toothbrush when it falls apart, pieces landing on the floor...now what? I picked up the two pieces that were where nearby but the scroll wheel was missing....found it after a couple hours of searching some 15 feet away under a shoe in the corner....grrrr..then the odd shaped piece of wire I'd found disappeared....another extensive search....found it stuck in the tread on the bottom of my shoe....miraculously it wasn't bent out of shape and ruined....figured out how the parts went back together....clean now.....tightened the little screw on the bottom, plugged it back in it's USB port and VOILA....it works like the day I first plugged it in...

Took the replacement mouse back to Best Buy, got my refund and blew it on a 12 roll pack of Northern toilet paper at Wally World. What's the moral of the story? Hell if I know but I do know this...don't be afraid to try to fix something that you can replace for $9...especially electronics....I bet the dumps are full of stuff that would still have worked if somebody had just looked into what had happened to them. My old mouse and I had had a blast online....we'd learned and taught many things together....and now my pal is back with me good as new.....I hope.

\
throw the thing away.

jesus! It has a virus!!!!

 

[Moonglow]

You just figure that out did ya Bart?

Nah, I've got about a dozen different types. I even have an old bar code reader mouse that had the old CAT-9 plug and is shaped like a mouse...My wife used it to do the old secret shopper type of operation on our old Dell we had with windows 95....

I had one of those too! Came with my Dell W98 machine...it was actually shaped like a mouse with a nose and ears, right? I found it a couple years ago and no idea what the hell it was or what it did.[/QUOTE]
I know, I finally tossed it after moving it to two different houses..i also has a ton of CD's from that later ninties I can't use, but hate to toss it...Some of my favorite Napoleonic era warfare is on '98 or XP.. We moved to a place where lightning would run down the telephone line and zap the computers...I've lost three computers this way.........Until I fixed the ground on the telephone companies line...

 

[Judicial review]

My mouse needs to be thrown at Fauns face.

 

[ChrisL]

Well, my rabbit chewed through my mouse cord this morning, so I had to take a trip to the store to get a new mouse. I went to Walmart because it was early, and I wasn't sure any other stores would be open yet. They had such a terrible selection. They had exactly ONE model of wired mouse and TWO models that were wireless. I bought a wireless one (my first) only because the rabbit chews through my cord, and I don't use that computer for play, only for working, so I'm thinking the wireless mouse should work fine for my needs.