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How to Tame Your Mouse
By Stephen Bucaro
Does your mouse work erratically, skip and jump across the screen, or freeze up?
Most problems with the mouse are caused by dirt or miscalibration.
Clean Your Mouse
Most mouses (mice?) work by use of a rubber ball that moves three rollers. It is
very common for the rubber ball to pick up dirt and feed it into the internal
mechanism of the mouse. Tame your mouse by giving it a good cleaning.
To clean a mouse, turn it over and remove the cover that retains the rubber ball.
The cover is usually circular with groves that let you turn the cover in a counter
clockwise direction for removal. Remove the rubber ball from the housing, wipe it
clean, and blow air into the mouse housing. Inspect the rollers to make sure they
are free of dirt. Then reassemble the mouse.
Jerky mouse movement can also be caused by the mouse pad. Most plastic laminate
covered mouse pads do not provide enough friction for the mouse to track reliably.
Cloth covered mouse pads perform much better, although they don't last as long.
Calibrate Your Mouse
If your mouse still does not behave, check it's calibration. Select
Start | Settings | Control Panel, and open the Mouse utility. In the Mouse
Properties dialog box, select the Buttons tab and move the Double-click
speed slider control to set the time between clicks that you want to be recognized
as a double click.
Then select the Motion tab and adjust the Pointer Speed slider control to
your preference. In the Acceleration section, set the None radio button, then
click on the OK button.
Check The Mouse Driver
On startup, Windows loads a virtual PS2 mouse driver that is contained (along with
other virtual device drivers) in the file C:\Windows\system\vmm32.vxd. If another
mouse driver is located in the folder c:\windows\system\vmm32, Windows will load that
one to replace the mouse driver in vmm32.vxd.
A second mouse driver, or other device driver may be interfering with the PS2
mouse driver. Use the Device Manager to troubleshoot errors. To access Device Manager
select Start | Settings | Control Panel, then open the System utility.
Select the Device Manager tab. In the list of devices, double-click on
Mouse. If there is an exclamation mark (!) or a red "X" on the mouse icon,
this means the mouse has a problem. A PS2 mouse uses IRQ 12. Make sure no other
device is configured to use IRQ 12, causing a conflict.
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