Erratic mouse double-click problem

I just joined the club. Mac G5 tower, dual processor. Been using a Macally game mouse. Worked fine until just about a week ago, then the mouse got real sensitive. Click on a window, it would dive into the dock and back out again. Click on an e-mail address in address book, and it would fill in about 5 to 10 of the same addresses. I had been hooked not into my keyboard port, but into a hub with the mouse, and old D-Link 1.1. Never problems before. Tried two other mice. Both showed same symptoms. Plugged into the front USB port on the tower directly from the mouse. Same result with all three mice. Booted up on OS disk (Tiger). Ran disk first aid. Disk first aid reported no problems, no files needed repair. THEN... I went into System Preferences, and changed the primary mouse button from left to right. The problem immediately disappeared. With all mice. Switched back, and the problem immediately was there again. Also, the problem was switched to the other side (another words, functions were swapped, and now the problems followed to the other side.) So, now I'm thinking it's not the mouse, the hub, or the cables, and that leaves what?.... The hardware of the system? Yuk.

Good work, but I'd think it narrows it down to Software, not Hardware. 🙂

Software on the MB (ROM), or software on the drive? My next step is to take the boot drive out of the machine, and replace it with another SATA drive from one of my G4's. If the software problem is on the hard disk, I will soon find out.

I suspect OSX corruption, but Have you done a PRAM reset, CMD+Option+p+r...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Hey BD,

Have you noticed that just about everyone here but the OP have Intel Macs, not eMacs. They just keep taggngi on.

🙂

Hi Everyone.

Just got the same issue here.

OSX10.6.9 - mac mini - intel core2

tried zapping PRAM. Did about 4 zaps initially. Repaired permissions.

Same issue continues.

Not sure that PRAM will solve the problem as it is not a double-click speed problem per se. The OS is misinterpreting a single click as a double (or perhaps it may be registering the Mouse-Up command as a second Mouse Down - will investigate further).

Very irritating. For example, I have lost loads of emails - when I try to delete 1, it sometimes deletes 2.

Am considering upgrading to 10.7 - anyone know if this solves it?

Have you tried another Mouse yet, or maybe swapping the left & right buttons for a test in System Preferences?

Tried 3 mice - all the same, was originally using the apple pro mouse - thought it was goofy so I looked up how to strip it down, and it involved cutting it open with a hacksaw!

Not tried swapping the buttons over yet.

After the second load of PRAM zapping, I'm starting to think it has lessened. Hope it's not the PRAM. Ever had a machine with a bad PRAM? time for the bin! Or beyond economic repair as they say...

I will keep you all posted. I've found threads on this which go back a few years! I would like to know if anyone's had any luck with 10.7 on this issue though.

Well, if switching buttons still does the same thing, we have a Software problem... it seems unlikely 3 Mice would have the same problem unlees they were Apple Mice, in which case I consider it far more likely that 3 mice could be the problem.

One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...

PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive

Reboot, test again.

Yeah, I too have been having this problem. It hasn't been going on that long, maybe for a few months. I figured my mouse was busted so I tried another el-cheapo USB mouse. Well, that too didn't work properly. Still one click would perform a double-click function😠. I just adjusted my mouse settings. Instead of it set to slow, I set it to very fast.

So far, no problems; my mouse clicks are back to normal.😎

OK, after switching machines and updating to OS 10.5.8 on a G5 Dual PCIe machine, the ghost followed me there. Using the same keyboard and mouse, I decided to continue my internet search to see if I could find any clues. I found one forum where somebody claimed the microswitch in their mouse went bad. So I started to experiment. Remember that when I switched the left mouse functions to the right side, my problem disappeared? So I took apart one of those hokey cheap Chinese $4 mice and cannibalized it for a microswitch, which was (aside from the color), a perfect replacement part for my $20 Macally gaming mouse (left and right switches are exactly the same). Well, immediately my multiple click problem was gone. But I've given it a month before I returned to this forum. I am not saying this will solve everyone's problem here, but in my case it did. Also, what was interesting, was that the problem at times seemed intermittent. In other words, the microswitch was bad, but not always. This made it harder to pin down. But I see absolutely no sign whatsover of the issue now, and believe me, I'm happy about it. Also, I put that bad microswitch in the right button of the cheapie mouse. And guess what? Yep, that right button is set to clear the windows off my desktop, and just like the other mouse when I switched buttons, the windows fly back and forth multiple times. So this truly pins it down to the microswitch. Hopefully, you won't see me here again. Thanks to all, it helped speed up the process.