Resolved Sudden mouse click action trouble

[PlateStacker]

A couple days ago, my mouse suddenly stopped functioning properly as far as click commands.

The problems are random and not consistent. But almost always performs a task I am not ordering it to.

• 
  Often single clicks act as double clicks and vise versa.

• Sometimes a single click of a word moves the courser to the in between the letters (if editable) or nothing (if not)as it should, but sometimes it would highlight the whole word, sometimes highlight the whole sentence.

• When I exit a tab on my FireFox browser, it would often close it and bring up a new tab also.

• When I try and drag click over a sentence or word to select it, it highlights until I let go of the button and then unhighlights.

• Dropdown menus such as browser bookmarks will flick down and go back up. I've got to click then a dozen times for it to randomly stay down.
  Same when I click a photo to enlarge, it flickers enlarged for a split second and the back to orginal size. Just as drop down menus. Again have to keep clicking for it to finally work.

I don't think it's a hardware issue. Changed USB ports
Happens in browser, desktop and other programs.


V Almost the exact sounding issue as this poster had! V
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1693137/


Thanks everyone!


OS X Mavericks
Late 2009 Mac Mini
Aftermarket mouse

 

[sharon22]

Here is what I would do.

Open System Preferences / Mouse

Then, spend about 10 minutes *purposely* selecting different speed settings and testing it out. Move the slider a little to the left, and try the mouse. Move the slider a little to the right, and try the mouse. In other words, make a conscious decision: "During the next 15 minutes, I will try every conceivable mouse speed/tracking setting."

The idea is to purposely muck with the OS's mouse preferences. This will cause the OS to build new/updated preferences, and may possibly fix your problem.

Then, do the usual: if your mouse uses a battery, put in a new battery. Optical mouse? Clean it. Ball mouse? Clean it. Clean Clean clean and fiddle with it. Clean the USB port on your computer, and clean the USB plug on your mouse (use a q-tip and/or vacuum cleaner, use a spray can duster), just make sure not to get it wet and/or damage the electronics.

Now, put back all your settings to the way you want them to be and try out the mouse.

Is it fixed now? Or....

Still having problems?

Okay then, fire up "Console," and put Console on the right-hand side of your screen. Then do a whole bunch of stuff on the left side of the screen (like you mentioned, open documents, move stuff around, etc.), and EVERY time something "weird" happens with your mouse, look IMMEDIATELY over at Console and see if there are any helpful messages.

Finally, the 3rd and last thing I can suggest is for you to go in to System Preferences / Users, and create a brand new user (just make up a name and password). Then, log yourself out. Then, log yourself back an as the NEW user you have just created. Now, see if that weird mouse behavior happens again. If it IS STILL THERE, then chances are very good it's a hardware problem (fried/shorted/loose thingamajig inside your mouse, or whatever). However, if the problem goes away, then you know it's a software issue. And, if you haven't fixed it yet from trying all the stuff I mentioned above, please post back and we will scientifically diagnose the problem.

 

[PlateStacker]

Solved

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my problems, I really appreciate it. I believe I fixed the problem, at least for now.

I simply replaced the mouse with another one of the same kind. But I did this before and it did not work. I believed it was not a hardware issue, because it would perform the commands I gave it, but then undo them. For instance, it would highlight the words I told it to, but then unhighlight as soon as I released the button. It would pull down a menu I told it to, but as soon as a released the button, the window would go back up. So the physical buttons worked themselves. It like the parameter to tell it to highlight words I choose worked, but the command to keep the words selected after I release my mouse button where failing. Same with drop down menus and many other things. Like the computer was only receiving partial commands and mixed signals.

I first moved the original mouse to different USB ports agaom to no avail.
I wonder if the old mouse was sending problem data to the computer? There was nothing physically wrong with original mouse.
Like the poster that had this problem before me, it just took time and playing around for it to go away, nothing specif really.. except maybe tying the new mouse again.

Thanks again

 

[sharon22]

I simply replaced the mouse with another one of the same kind.

Well that's cheating! (LOL just kidding)

I think the most frustrating things that can *ever* happen to a mac, are things related to the mouse. Because, a "mouse click" can do just about ANYTHING to one's system.

It is clever that you thought of simply replacing it. Glad it worked!