Mice

Cleaning a ball mouse

If you’re still using an old-fashioned ball mouse and the cursor stops moving smoothly on the screen, you need to clean inside the mouse in order to solve the problem.

1. Turn the mouse over to look at the underside. You should be able to see part of the rubber ball that rolls as you use the mouse, and a plastic retaining ring that holds the rubber ball inside the mouse. There are often arrows stamped into the plastic retaining ring to show that it is meant to rotate.
2. Rotate the plastic retaining ring anti-clockwise until it becomes loose with a sudden click.
3. Turn the mouse the right way up again and catch the plastic retaining ring and rubber ball as they fall.
4. If the rubber ball is covered in dirt or sticky gunge, clean it using washing-up liquid and water applied with a paper tissue, then dry it.
5. Turn the mouse over again, and use a soft wooden toothpick to wipe accumulated dust and dirt from the two long rollers you can see inside the mouse. This muck should come off in chunks which must be shaken out of the mouse rather than allowed to fall deeper into the works. Use the toothpick to rotate each roller, in order to make sure you’ve removed all the dirt from it, rather than just the dirt that was immediately visible when you opened the mouse.
6. Place the rubber ball back inside the mouse, place the plastic retaining ring back over the ball, and rotate the ring clockwise until it clicks back into place.
7. Test the mouse to make sure that the cursor once again moves smoothly across the screen. If it does not move smoothly then you may have left some dirt behind on one of the internal rollers, or failed to clean the rubber ball properly, or the problematic cursor movement is being caused by something other than a dirty mouse.

Having said all this, you might be better off just buying a new optical mouse. These are more accurate and are often wireless, so you’ll no longer have the problem of having to drag the lead that hangs from the back of a ‘traditional’ wired mouse.