The trappings of my new job, brought a new Dell Latitude D630 and a Dell optical scroll mouse. The Latitude has been banging away quite nicely but the mouse is another story.

 My mouse is possessed. It scrolls randomly drifting to the top right or bottom left of my screen.

I have:

• tried different USB ports
• upgraded the drivers
• tried different mice
• uninstalling the device
• beating my head against a wall.

But surprisingly none of these things have worked.

But then after a little bit of web searching I found out a few people were having the exact same problem. The two things in common? A Dell optical USB mouse and a light grey Dell mouse pad. Interesting…

So the fix to stop this awful scrolling?

Turn the mouse mat over. The dark rubber side facing up with the Dell logo and light grey side facing down. This is only a short term fix until I get myself a new mouse mat.

Dell, why give out a mat that does not reflect your optical signal?

 UPDATE (20 Feb 2008) : Further to this I have had to disable the Dell Touchpad when an external mouse is detected. In your system tray there should be a Dell Touchpad icon, right click and select “Touchpad Properties”. Now select “Device Select” and down the bottom of this screen there should be a checkbox that reads “Disable Touchpad/Pointing Stick when external USB mouse is present”. Make sure the checkbox is selected hit “OK” and its all fixed. Problem completely gone!