Mighty-Mouse Scrollwheel – Dead then NOT!

Geekery, Ramblings / September 3, 2008 / John / 0

Ok, so the mighty mouse is a thing of beauty. It’s an accurate, comfortable and pretty mouse. Except it has a tiny little pea-sized rollerball embedded in the top for scrolling in 360 degrees.

The trouble is, gunge, oose and muck get in there and, if it blocks the sensors, stops the scrollball from working. This happened to me this morning.

As the mouse internals are effectively hermetically sealed, there’s no way to get it cleaned – or so I thought. Googling revealed loads of weird and wonderful ways to clean it – from the brute-force methods of vivisecting the mouse through to the weird chicken-sacrificing pressurised air freaks.

Then I tried the unthinkable – I have wet and dry screen wipes here. “I know,” I thought, “I’ll give it a clean with one of these IPA soaked wipes.”

Bingo! One minute later, my scrollball was restored to its usual state of aceness.

Result!

John

UNIX geek, wannabe cook, musician, book-lover, and all round good-guy.