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Cleaning the mighty mouse ball

Does anyone else find their mighty mouse scroll ball has stopped working? It works to move webpages etc upward but not down. Cant work out why. anyone any suggestions on what I can do to get it working again and what not to use to clean it.

iMac 21.5" 3.06Ghz 4Gb RAM, MacBook 2Ghz 2Gb RAM + Mac Mini 1.42Ghz G4 1Gb RAM, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Nov 29, 2009 11:40 AM

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18 replies

Feb 5, 2010 12:24 PM in response to DMarsh

Before I abandoned my mighty mouse for a magic mouse this is how I cleaned the ball when it would stop working:

1. Wash your hands so that they have nothing on them to contaminate the mouse further.

2. Take a Q-tip (aka cotton swab), and dip it in some rubbing alcohol, roll the moistened tip on a towel to remove the excess.

3. Run the Q-tip over the ball in all directions, occasionally stopping the ball from rolling with a fingernail. Do this until you no longer see any evidence of dirt/lint coming from the ball. You might have to use the other end of the Q-tip, and redo step 2, to continue cleaning the ball if the first end becomes overly dirty.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that anything you have on your mouse hand is going to gum up the ball, so make sure that hand is clean. No eating chips, etc with that hand.

Feb 12, 2010 4:14 AM in response to DMarsh

Hi,

Had the same problem with two of my mighty mice one USB the other Wireless.

Spoke to a chap at apple support and got a different suggestion for cleaning that worked to clear both mice without disassembling or using damaging cleaning agents.

1 Disconnect the mouse.
2 Place mouse upside down on a clean piece of paper
3 Scrub the mouse ball hard on the paper - debris will start to appear
4 Plug the mouse in and hopefully its fixed, if not just repeat.

(Make sure to keep using clean paper. It took a few attempts but eventually both mice are now working like new again.)

Message was edited by: Marshmansmithy

Feb 12, 2010 5:15 AM in response to DMarsh

Cleaning seems to be only a temporary solution. Had two go at about the same time. Turning it over and running it on something absorbent worked sometimes. Complete breakdown and cleaning worked about the same. Dripping alcohol in while pressing down on the ball was only marginally successful. Finally, gave in and bought a Magic Mouse for the one 24" iMac and a replacement wireless Mighty Mouse for the other. Both are working fine so far. The Magic Mouse is by far the best mouse I've ever used, and highly recommend that over anything out there.

Feb 22, 2010 7:13 AM in response to Marshmansmithy

Marshmansmithy's suggestion worked for me. I unplugged Mr Mouse and gave him a serious upside down rolling around, pressing really hard, on a sheet of white paper.

At the first attempt there was no improvement.

At the second attempt I pressed REALLY hard and out came a lump of gunge, on to the white paper, which could only have been insde the mouse. It couldn't have come from anywhere else.

So now me and Mr Mouse are friends again.

Thanks Marshman

Cleaning the mighty mouse ball

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