Microsoft Optical Trackball stops responding

[vacunita]

I have a Microsoft Trackball Optical 1.1 USb, Recently it has been acting up. It will suddenly stop responding while being and I can't get it to be recognized again after that. When I plug it into a USB port it will flicker for a second and then turn off again. Windows will then tell me the "USB device was not recognized"

It will sometimes, but not very often, come back when i have it plugged in before turning on the computer. It will then be recognized and be useable for a little while before failng again. But more often than not it will not come up, and just prompt the USB device not recognized message.

I've unplugged all USB devices form all ports to see if it was having some kind of conflict with another device but it still wont turn on.

I'm not sure what the problem could be, i have changed it to different USB ports on the PC. I have 4 1.1 USB ports built onto the mobo, and 4 USB 2.0 ports on an addon card. I also have a USB 2.0 hub with 4 ports. The mouse will exhibit the same behaviour regardless of where it is plugged.

I would love to get this mouse working again as Microsoft discontinued production and support for this trackball mouse and it can no longer be found. And it is the most confortable mouse i've ever used.

Any ideas of what could ne wrong, and how to fix it will really be appreciated.


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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[kestrel1]

Are you having problems with anyother USB devices?
Can you try the mouse in another computer, just to make sure that it is the mouse that may be at fault?

 

[vacunita]

As I said i unplugged everything else from the USB ports. A USB fash drive, IPod dock/speaker, Gamepad, 10 in 1 card Reader form Sandisk. ocassionaly a Scanner, but it was unplugged when this started happening and a Printer also unplugged when this occured.

The only things plugged into the USB ports where the ipod dock/speaker, and the gamepad which were plugged into the hub. The mouse was plugged into a USB 1.1 port that is built into the mobo.

I tried the mouse on my laptop, and it pops up the same message "USB device not recognized...". Having it plugged in before turning on the laptop does nothing.

I'm pretty sure its the mouse as any other USB device works fine on all ports.


----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[kestrel1]

Sounds like the mouse has had it unfortunatly. It may just be the cable has come loose inside, unscrew the case & check it out.

 

[vacunita]

I unscrewed the case of thwe trackball, and everythng seemed to be connected. When I put the case back together the mouse came up for a second, i could move it and click thngs, but then it turned off. I'm leaning towards a connection issue with the USB plug on the mouse.

It looks o.k but it may have a short, is there any way to confirm this?

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[kestrel1]

I don't think there will be an easy way to test the cable or plug. I wonder if you would be able to swap the cable with the cable from an MS USB mouse. Not sure if the connectors inside the mice would be the same, but if you know of anyone that has one lying around, maybe they would let you try it. Lets face it a trackball is only an upside down mouse. If the connections are the same, it may sort it out.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

I love that tracball also and have had problems with the connector inside the mouse. What I did was cut about 4 inches off the end of the cable(the part that goes into the mouse) because it was shorted, then i soldered the shortened cable to the connectors and it worked fine. i've had to do this to 2 different ones so I suspect yours might be the same problem.

 

[vacunita]

Would they just short out out of nowhere?

The cable has a connector tip, that goes into a socket, as opposed to having the cable ends soldered onto the chip. but i see no signs of shorting. (burn marks, or even burnt plastic smell)

So i'm not totally convinced the cause is inside the mouse. More likely the USB tip has the short. How hard would it be to change the USB tip?




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

my shorts were at the point the cable goes into the housing, I cut that out and soldered the cables back together wire for wire, not to a terminal board.

 

[vacunita]

I checked the cable at the point where it goes into the mouse, moving around made the mouse get picked up.

So you were right, the short is almost surely there.

Now what exactyl would i have to do, cut the cable around the point of the bend that goes into the mouse, on both sides of the bend. Peel the individual cables, and solder them together? Would twisitng thme together and wrapping them in electric tape, work?



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

If I remember correctly you could twist the wires together, but there is not very much room inside the mouse when it is put back together, so i soldered and had some shrink tubing I put over it, you couldnt look in mine and know it was soldered there if I didn't tell you.

I guess you could twist them and use electrical tape but go sparingly on it, you will see you have to bend the wire just right to put it back together.

They should have used a grommet there to protect the wiring a little better than they did since it seems to be a common fail point. It is still a great mouse though, I bought a few off ebay, you might can still find them there, also at Best buy they have an optical by logitech that is almost as good.

 

[vacunita]

I'll take a stab at it later this week, as i don't have too much time to fiddle around with it. I might also look into buying a couple off ebay to have as backups. And I'll look into the Logitech one at BestBuy.

It trully is a great mouse, its just very sad that Microsoft discontinued them.

Wonder why they did that.




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.