Intermittent mouse scroll problem

For the past 3 or 4 months my mouse's scroll wheel will occasionally not work right after boot-up. Everything else works, and the only work-around I've found is to shut down, wait a few seconds, and power up all over again. Then it's fine. A warm restart doesn't seem to do it. The problem occurred only intermittently, weeks apart, until yesterday and today. As I say, it's only the wheel scrolling that's a problem, and two days in a row is more annoyance than I want to put with (Up with which I don't want to put?).

Cause of problem? Solution?

System particulars below.

 

After I double checked all my settings in the control panel and the mouse software (If you have an icon in your system tray, try right clicking on it), then the first thing I would do is uninstall the software that came with the mouse, reboot, then reinstall the software. The second thing I would do, if that didn't work, was try to find updated drivers for it. Then I would replace it as a last resort. Life is too short for aggravation caused by a mouse.

Johanna

 

Johanna: Thanks for replying.

Before I go ahead and delete or uninstall or replace anything, I'm wondering if a problem as intermittent as this one is could really be caused by a driver file that's become corrupted. I would think a bum driver would produce the problem every time. Am I wrong on that? The mouse is the OEM unit that came with this Dell, and the driver is the standard PS/2 Compatible Mouse driver for Windows XP. Is there likely to be a more updated driver?

One way to find out, of course, is to try by using the Mouse icon in Control Panel and the buttons available there (that's where I saw the driver files -- there are 2 of them, both in C:\Windows\System32). But before I begin messing around, I'd like to be clearer on the likelihood that the analysis and the cure are appropriate, given the facts as I'm finding them.

(Intermittent problems are the most maddening kind, aren't they?)

 

BOBBO - if it were me, I'd try her suggested fix.

Fairly quick and easy, can't hurt (except the part about replacing the rodent and that may hurt the wallet but only a very little), may well help.

And an absolute waste of time trying other troubleshooting things until you are sure it isn't a buggy driver or device.

 

Newt: OK, looks like I'll be doing some uninstalling, etc. It's going to have to wait a few hours, though, at least. Social plans for the evening.

 

Let us know how it works for you.

 

Newt: Fair enough. I haven't done any changing yet today. One of the beauties of this problem being intermittent is that this morning the mouse wheel scrolls just fine. So even after I do the driver jobs, it may be a month or more before I get a sense of their having done any good. Won't ever really know for sure so long as the problem doesn't reappear. If it does recur, though, I'll let you know that, for sure.