By Stephen Bucaro

Does your mouse work erratically, skip and jump across screen, or freeze up? Most problems with mouse are caused by dirt or miscalibration.

Clean Your Mouse

Most mouses (mice?) work by use of a rubber ball that moves three rollers. It is very common for rubber ball to pick up dirt and feed it into internal mechanism of mouse. Tame your mouse by giving it a good cleaning.

To clean a mouse, turn it over and remove cover that retains rubber ball. The cover is usually circular with groves that let you turn cover in a counter clockwise direction for removal. Remove rubber ball from housing, wipe it clean, and blow air into mouse housing. Inspect rollers to make sure they are free of dirt. Then reassemble mouse.

Jerky mouse movement can also be caused by mouse pad. Most plastic laminate covered mouse pads do not provide enough friction for mouse to track reliably. Cloth covered mouse pads perform much better, although they don't last as long.

Calibrate Your Mouse

If your mouse still does not behave, check it's calibration. Select Start | Settings | Control Panel, and open Mouse utility. In Mouse Properties dialog box, select Buttons tab and move Double-click speed slider control to set time between clicks that you want to be recognized as a double click.

Then select Motion tab and adjust Pointer Speed slider control to your preference. In Acceleration section, set None radio button, then click on OK button.

Check The Mouse Driver

On startup, Windows loads a virtual PS2 mouse driver that is contained (along with other virtual device drivers) in file C:Windowssystemvmm32.vxd. If another mouse driver is located in folder c:windowssystemvmm32, Windows will load that one to replace mouse driver in vmm32.vxd.

In early stages of word processing programs, macros were used to record a series of keystrokes that can be reused quickly in all of your documents. Macros were an excellent way to automate tasks that you needed on a regular basis like signing letters, recalling a paragraph used often, or setting up special page settings. When these programs came out with Windows versions, you could record mouse clicks in addition to keystrokes; Microsoft Word 97-2002 can even memorize commands whether you use a button, a menu, or a keystroke.

Sounds cool don’t it? Let’s make one in Microsoft Word. To start, go to Tools menu ~ Macro ~ Record New Macro. Give you macro a name that describes what macro will do; then make it a button or a keystroke by clicking on Toolbars or Keyboard button. Your mouse arrow with have a tape attached to it to let you know that you’re recording; when you’ve done everything you wanted to save, click on Stop button. And when you’re ready, try out your macro with your button or keystroke and it will repeat commands that you recorded previously.