TO CLEAN A REGULAR, NON-OPTICAL MOUSE:

Note: An optical mouse has a red laser light and doesn’t require periodic cleaning. You can see this light if you turn the mouse over.

An older-style, non-optical mouse has a large, hard rubber ball inside, which rolls over your mouse pad and moves the mouse pointer. You must occasionally take out this hard rubber ball and remove the lint that builds up on the three small rollers inside in order to prevent skipping of the mouse pointer or sluggish movement of the pointer. Here’s how you can clean these types of mice:

1) With the computer OFF, turn the mouse over.

2) You will see a thin plastic ring with tiny ripples all around it (or depressions for your thumbs) which surrounds the opening where you can see the hard rubber ball. Use your thumbs to rotate this thin plastic ring about an eighth-turn [1/8] counter-clockwise.

3) Turn the mouse over. The thin plastic ring and the ball should fall out into your hand (or on the floor).

4) Look inside the opening where the ball normally resides. (You may need a flashlight.) You should see two very wide, but thin, rollers (usually black) and one tiny narrow one (usually white) arranged at 120 degree angles from each other.

5) You should see some lint buildup in the center of one or more rollers. Use something like a small penknife blade, a scalpel or an Exacto knife to scrape the lint off the rollers. Use a can of pressurized air or your breath to blow the lint you dislodge from the rollers out of the mouse ball opening.

Caution: Be sure to scrape very gently because you can damage the rollers if you use too much force.

6) When you are finished cleaning the rollers, replace the rubber ball and the thin plastic strip. Give the thin plastic strip an eighth-turn clockwise until you hear a faint “click.”

7) Turn ON the computer and try the mouse. If the mouse pointer still skips, you may have to replace the mouse or try other troubleshooting tips (you could be downloading some very large update in the background which can cause sluggish movement of the mouse pointer. This slowdown will normally disappear in a few minutes, hours or a day or so, if this is the case.)