Computer mouse acting strange - never seen this before. Help please.

Factual Questions
1

Computer at work (XP SP3) with Logitech wireless mouse. Double click is not working, here are the symptoms:

Single click a desktop icon, it highlights the icon.
Double click the icon, nothing happens.
In Quick Books, double clicking does nothing.
Mouse properties, on the space for double click test, it activates after a single click.
It is set to open programs on double click. Not single click.
I can set the programs to open on single click and it works fine. But in a program double click will not work.
Yes, I’ve rebooted. Several times.

Been dealing with PCs for many years, have never seen this problem before? Anyone? Please?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this.

Ric

2

The double click speed hasn’t been increased has it?

3

Nope. First thing I checked.

4

Do you have another mouse to test on this same computer? I’ve seen a lot of odd behavior when a mouse stops working quite right. Either try that, or test the mouse on another computer to rule that out.

If that works well, you may want to try uninstalling and reinstalling your mouse driver. Or even just getting a new one (quite a few are interchangeable, oddly enough. For example, you can run a Logitech mouse using a Microsoft driver, something I did back in the old days because the latter had a feature the former did not.)

And, of course, you should check your computer for viruses and spyware, the latter because sometimes programs designed to track what you do screw up and mess up something else in your system. An obvious way this could be messed up is if the spyware intercepts your mouse clicks and then repeats them to the system. If the part that sends the double click is messed up, you’d see the problem you have now.

5

Wireless mouse, so maybe it’s the battery.

6

They’re not built very well, like most things today. I had one wireless mouse that had problems with the contacts getting bent or worn or weakened to where the mouse worked intermittently and had to be euthanized. Try changing the configuration to make the right button the selection button and see if it works on double click. If it does, then that’s probably the problem.

7

This was my second thought. My first was that the receiver is not plugged in properly.

Is this a new mouse?

8

Fixed it.

Turns out that the Logitech driver had somehow replicated itself, so there were two mouse drivers in use. Disabling one of them returned it to normal.

Thank you for your help. It’s greatly appreciated.

9

Edit: Welp, nevermind. I was totally wrong.

Thirding “check the batteries”. Wireless mice will do all sorts of weird things when the batteries are close to running out.

Also, there should be a procedure for re-establishing the wireless connection between the mouse and the receiver. Usually you have to press a button on the receiver, followed by pressing a button on the bottom of the mouse. Do that if you haven’t already. Rebooting the computer probably won’t accomplish this.

It sounds to me like some kind of hardware problem with the mouse itself, rather than something in software. It could even be a mechanical problem with the button. I actually had that problem recently with my 10+ year old (wired) Intellimouse clone at home. The button was sticking slightly on release. About 5% of the time that I left-clicked, it would register double click instead. Eventually, I managed to get it unstuck by a combination of intense button-pressing along its edges and careful prying.