I have a wired Mighty Mouse, not the new Magic Mouse but the kind with the little rubber trackball on top.
My first mouse, the one that came with my iMac, stopped scrolling downward, and was replaced under AppleCare. I’m no longer under AppleCare, and I’ve had this mouse half as long as the first one, and in the last 36 hours or so, my trackball is pulling the same “scroll down? Pfft!” thing.
Generally I just run my fingernail around the edge and blow out any obvious debris that I can dislodge. But that only gets whatever shmutz is accessible with my fingernail. That hasn’t worked this time.
Is there anything in particular that might restore the function, a way of cleaning under the trackball where the sensors are that perhaps I’ve not thought of? I’m trying to avoid replacing it, as I’m about to have to replace my MacBook battery, just bought an iPad, it seems like all my discretionary cash is mainlined directly to Cupertino these days. :o
I was on the verge of throwing mine out. My daughter and I were youtubing Mermaids or something and I saw the video on the side bar. It was a Eureka! moment.
If the piece of paper sounds like too much effort just push down on the scrollball with your thumb and scroll it in different directions for a bit, you should be able to see some gunk come out from underneath, that does the trick for me.
A bit of a warning if you decide to disassemble the mighty mouse: The second “ring” is very hard to remove without damaging it. The tiny plastic clips that hold it in place are not designed to be re-inserted into their holes. There is a good chance that your mouse will never be the same.
One interesting thing I noticed when I took mine apart, is that the wheel is just a miniture version of the wheel that was inside every mouse several years ago before IR mice were standard. As such, is is prone to the same gunking-up that old mice suffered from.
Try cleaning the thing every time it clags up until you’re ready to throw it at the wall. Throw it at the wall, nice and hard. Get a Logitech with a scroll wheel and be happy.
I didn’t really throw it, but I wanted to. I though it was a nice bit of kit while it was working properly, maybe a bit on the heavy side, loved the trackball. The Logitech I ended up with (M-RCQ142) is lighter, a better fit for my hand, and the scroll wheel hasn’t done me wrong yet. It was a bit tricky to find a bluetooth model, most seem to need a USB reciever, which takes up a port, which is bad when you only have two on your MacBook.
Apple have a newer model mouse since the one I gave up on, and it might be better again.
Is it just me? When I click on that link, for some reason, on my Macintosh, it tries to open up the iTunes store. I got the link to work by removing the last parameter in the link http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1262339
The first time my Mighty Mouse got stuck, I brought it to the Apple store. The employee who cleaned it for me did what is suggested in this thread: turn the mouse upside down and rub it with a cloth (he used a screen-cleaning cloth.) He also put some kind of alcohol cleaner on the cloth. I’ve since done it myself using just the cloth but without the alcohol.
The new Magic Mouse doesn’t have a trackball at all, you just slide your finger over the top to scroll up or down. This looks like a great improvement over the old trackball method.
I learned that the hard way.