My mouse has become uncontrollable. The little arrow wont go where I want it to go. It jumps about all over the screen.
You wouldn't believe just how hard it was to manouvre it onto here!!

Any ideas?

Is it a fancy one with a light under it or an older one?

If an older one, there is probably dirt inside on the rollers that needs cleaning. There would be a cover that twists off and a ball falls out. I use a cue-tip and rubbing alcohol to clean the rollers and also clean the ball.

oops, forgot to mention if it is a newer one, i have no idea what the problem might be.

could it be the battery? - I think that happened with mine.

It wants some cheese Carol.

To be serious though I think I would get a new one.
We always have a spare just in case this happens because we have to wait for my son to come and undo ours because neither hubby and I can manage fiddling things now.

This reminded me of an incident the other night when hubby could not get his arrow to go where he wanted it to on his computer and I said quite innocently " I think your balls want a rub up."
We both fell about laughing because he said " At my b****y age you will be lucky to find them."
I couldn't see the screen on my computer with the tears of laughter rolling down my face.

It's an old type one with a ball underneath. The first thing I did was clean it but it made no difference. What worries me is if it's caused by a trojan! I've run my Norton... What else can I do?

When I am able to get to a computer shop I will buy myself one of those optical mouses. I've heard they're good... In the meantime I'll have to put up with this... it took me 5 mins just to access this page. Grrrrrrrr.

If you look inside the area where the ball goes you will see a number of roller / wheels these can get dirt in them.

Clean the surface of the rollers then get a pair of tweezers and pick out all the bits of rubbish mainly down the side.

I think that will cure it

I've already done that. It hasn't made any difference Old-n

Optical Mouse from Amazon from £3.44. and upwards.

Has it got Parkinson's carol? seriously though, I think the only way to sort it is to buy a new one, that's what I had to do, but don't let it know what you are doing when you order one ... or it will judder even more

Or it will start working again!!

It's ok now, I gave it a second clean as Old-n advised ... I was more thorough this time.
Something as simple as that eh?

hurrah!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Shutterfrog, that's what you advised too ... I just couldn't have done it thoroughly enough the first time.

If you are worried about trojans etc do you run malwarebytes often?

If you used AVG 2011 freeware it now does Virus and trojans