Magic mouse will no longer track on a surface it could before.

[Mustava]

Hi everyone,
So recently and seemingly randomly, my magic mouse has stopped tracking on my desk surface. It moves but jaggedly and only slightly.

My desk has a semi shiny finish to it, and the magic mouse has always worked on it in the past.

The weird thing is if i put it on a black surface it tracks fine...

I have tried the following
-Cleaning laser lens
-Resetting pram etc
-Resetting bluetooth settings
-Different mac.

I am confused to what it could be?
any ideas?

 

[John T]

You say the mouse is not performing with another Mac. This proves the problem is with the mouse.

Does it work OK on a non-shiny surface?

Erratic tracking usually results from dirt or a trapped hair in the lenses. Make sure they are really clean. Examine them under a magnifying glass and puff out any dust with a "blower" (used to remove dust etc. from camera lenses) - do not use canned compressed air because it can eject moisture which can cause more harm than good!

 

[Ingster]

Sounds daft but have you tried new batteries? Low powered (partly depleted) batteries may struggle with the shiny surface as a stronger beam may be required to track well on that surface where on a darker bsurface it only requires a lower powered beam to track properly.

 

[jamesalm]

Upon upgrading to mountain lion, my mouse was working fine. however my system was not, so I did a full format-reinstall, and THEN my magic mouse stopped tracking on my mousepad, which it had worked on since day one.

It still worked on my desk though, but I think I may have found a solution.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, but this is what I did.

I opened up sys prefs, went to mouse settings, and unchecked 'Smart zoom'
I left scroll direction off and secondary click on, and miraculously it started tracking on my mousepad again. So maybe just try fooling with the mouse option toggles?

I dont know or understand why this could work, but it seems to have. give it a shot. And yes, I realize this is an old thread, but it's what comes up on google when you search for this problem. Hope it helps.