Just when you’re ready to work on the computer, your mouse suddenly seems to have a mind of its own and no longer functions correctly. Like other computer hardware, the mouse has its own set of issues. Fortunately, the common solutions are simple and won’t require opening this peripheral device to perform diagnostics.
- Just click a button to wake the mouse. Computers often turn off components that have been unused for a while to save power.
- Ensure the connections are secure. Try plugging it into different USB ports. If it’s wireless, check if its switch is turned on, its battery hasn’t ran out of power, and (for Bluetooth models) it’s successfully paired with the computer.
- Clean your mouse. Some dirt may have blocked the roller ball or the optical sensor.
- Use a mouse-pad. Some computer mice, especially models with optical sensors, don’t work on certain surfaces such as transparent glass.
- Make sure the installed drivers are compatible, or if there’s even a mouse driver installed. Some hardware changes or software installations may have introduced driver conflicts that make computer mice to misbehave.
- Change mouse settings. Go to your operating system’s mouse properties or preference pane and see if the right settings are set. For instance, there may be configurations for indicating how fast the pointer should move or setting which button is the primary button.
- Try other computer mice. If none of them works on any port, you probably have a motherboard issue. If all mice except one do work, then you have one bad mouse that need to be replaced.
- Fix your frozen computer by rebooting. So maybe it’s not the mouse that’s acting up, but rather the computer in an unresponsive state. For computers running Windows, confirm by pressing the Num Lock, Ctrl+Alt+Del or Windows key on the keyboard. If nothing happens, then your computer is frozen.
