I have a Logitech M705 wireless mouse. There’s a button below the scroll wheel that allows you to switch between smooth scrolling and line-by-line scrolling. A week or so ago, the switch button stopped working. The mouse was stuck in smooth scrolling mode, while I prefer the other mode. I wasn’t able to fix the problem, so I opened a ticket with Logitech. The service rep walked me through the standard troubleshooting steps (reboot, drivers up-to-date, uninstall/reinstall, etc.), none of which helped. I wasn’t comfortable with trying to open the mouse, since a mistake might leave me with a non-working device. The service rep started to initiate a warranty replacement. However, yesterday (Oct. 10), the switch button started working as normal and has remained so for more than 24 hours. I hadn’t taken any troubleshooting steps in the interim.
I tried to think what might have happened to cause the switch button to work. I had a thought that the trouble began shortly after my area entered a heat wave. Outside temperatures approached 100*F and the temperatures in my apt. ranged between the upper 70s overnight and the upper 80s during the day (no air conditioning). The switch button began working after the first full day of normal temps (temp in the 70s in my apt.).
Is it plausible that the high temps caused the problem? Perhaps a circuit board in the mouse overheated. I can’t think of any other explanation.
First off, the Logitech service rep is an idiot. Rebooting, drivers, and anything that you can install or uninstall won’t do anything for that issue.
Second, nothing involving a circuit board is relevant, either. That button is purely mechanical, not electronic at all. All it does is engage or disengage a little plastic doohickey with ridges, that the wheel is in contact with.
As to what caused and/or resolved the issue, my guess is a little bit of grunk somewhere, that eventually worked its way loose.
How long have you had it? These days those are $30 on Amazon, so in a pinch a new one might not be a bad idea.
I say that because some time back I had one of their fancier models and it had a switch start going bad. The mouse cost around $100, so I really wanted to rescue it. I spent more time than I should have working on the internals and came to the conclusion that the switches just aren’t designed with serviceability in mind. They were so fragile and fiddly that I was amazed that they worked in the first place.
I bought it on Amazon in January 2024. I was grasping at straws with trying to relate the problem to the temperature variations in my locale. One of my troubleshooting steps was to blast the button with compressed air (several times). Doing so had no immediate effect but may have loosened whatever was causing the problem. Buying another mouse to serve as a backup is a good suggestion.