[Techtalk] Dances with Mice

[Yaroslav Fedevych]

This is sad story. Maybe someone of you will help make it end happy, but for now, I'm in desperation.

The story has begun when we bought two identical mice for our PCs in the office. They are OK though Chinese :), but suddenly one of them began to behave strangely. It refused to move along X-axis. Boss was mad at me (I am blamed always -- when OpenOffice sucks, when KDE shows a bug or so), so it was hopeless for me to persuade her to use vi and get rid of rodents on the desktop. I was unable to run away.

The immediate answer was to replace the mouse. First it was OK, then the same problem showed. I was desperated. Then I checked if the problem -- seemed strictly hardware, because using finger instead of ball revealed that software is just OK -- will show on another PC. It didn't. But after swapping mice the 'disobedient' one worked just fine, while other went crazy like the previous. 

Then I've suspected surface on which it was moved. I provided balls clean, and while one mouse went through testing on a pad, other remained upside down, waiting for its turn, to avoid contact with any surface except that very pad. 

Results were the same. Internals are OK, software is OK, surface is OK. But a mouse attached to that particular PC still behaves strangely, although it could be better, as taking off the ball and rotating its axis wheels revealed. Still an enigma. 

The boss is still angry. She feels I look better when fired. But I don't think so, and I don't think the problem is trivial.

I didn't try to swap the PCs instead of mice. It would be very unconvenient though it would give me that comfortable I've-tried-everything excuse. But I think someone, somewhere solved similar problem, or at least knows what to do before I call shamans. I hope so, that's why I posted that long, sad story.

I'm sorry for wasted bandwidth and thank warmly in advance all those willing to help.