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Over the last few days I have noticed that the scroll wheel on my Logitech LX3
Optical Wheel Mouse began acting weirdly. It seemed to work properly when scrolling up the page, but was very
erratic when scrolling down. I was blaming the problem on the computer processor not being able to keep up with
all the open applications, but finally today the &@#$% got so annoying that I decided to apply my 35+ years of
electronics troubleshooting experience to figuring out where the problem lay. After verifying that the driver was
up-to-date, I plugged a spare mouse in and tried it - yep, worked fine. Must be the Logitech mouse.
If you remember the bad old days before optical mouses [sic] when a ball rolled on the mouse pad to drive the x-y
encoders, you undoubtedly also remember how every couple weeks you needed to remove the ball and blow out all the
accumulated dust, cracker crumbs, eyebrow hairs, and other disgusting objects. Optical mice mercifully did away
with that ritual, so surely the same type of failure mechanism could not be at work here, right?. Here's
what I found upon opening the mouse. See any problem?
Yikes! The mysterious thing here is that the only opening in the case is on top, so all that crap entered
through the small slit around the wheel. I'm surprised the thing worked at all! The main culprit looks like fuzz
from the carpet at our previous house, but there were a few chunks of things I don't want to know about in there
too. A dental pick and small vacuum attachment took care of everything. Hopefully, I'll get another 3-4 years use
out of the mouse before having to disembowel it again. Ha, Melanie just commented that it looks like a
mouse was building a nest inside! Posted 11/14/2011
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