Hey all. I've been having some problems with my Dell optical mouse for the past few months. It started off slow at first but slowly got worse over time. The mouse pointer on screen seemed to jump and move all on its own which made it annoying when trying to select things. I looked around the net for a solution and saw reflective surfaces are bad for optical but my mouse pad is black hard plastic plus I've used this same mouse since I had the comp which is almost two and a half years ago. Soon my pointer was jumping and moving as though someone else were controlling it some times. Then my mouse just stated to power off randomly as though it were unplugged. Now it's gotten to the point where my pointer will freeze up and I have to hold the mouse still for a second or two before it will move again. Or the red light will just turn off completely and I'll have to unplug and replug the mouse from the USB port just to get it to move again. I've recently reformatted my hard drive and taken my comp back to factory settings but the problem still persists so obviously it must be in the hardware but I wanted to ask around to see if there was something I could do or may not have done yet before I get a new mouse and possibly have the same problems. I like the opticals a lot better than the originals so anyone care to lend a hand?
Makes me wonder if a short has started to develop in the cord. You can try playing with the cord to see if you can trigger something at a certain point.
As far as I know, the cord had stayed pretty stationary. I had it plugged into the USB port in the back of the PC but after a while, even the unplug/ replug trick stopped working so I hooked it into one of the ports in the front. Still the same problems but at least I get some use out of it.
