Why does my Logitech mouse sometimes ignore the scroll wheel turning?

Question

About a week ago my Logitech G502 Proteus's scroll wheel intermittently stopped scrolling correctly. It appears to happen in a pattern; so if I scroll up 50 times in a row, it will ignore the 10th, 20th, etc scrolls while recognizing the rest of them.

I couldn't find much about it on Google. I found a few threads complaining about the G502's scroll wheel in general but the only suggestions were to RMA it, replace the scroll wheel entirely, or switch to a different model. A few people appeared to have my exact issue but nobody seems to have the fix for it.

What can I do to fix this?

Answer 1

The solution turned out to be very simple. As I learned from this Superuser post, Logitech's scroll wheels use a diode and receptor to recognize when the little spokes inside the wheel are turn. Unfortunately, if dust manages to lodge itself inside the spokes, it blocks the signal, preventing the action from being recognized for that particular turn.

After following this guide (volume warning), I opened up my mouse, noticed that the spokes had a few small pieces of dust caught inside them, and sprayed them with compressed air ($2-3 at Walmart) until the dust was cleared. That fixed the problem.

I didn't take a photo of the dust but this is roughly what it looked like:

Answer 2

A common problem with mouse whose scroll wheel stops working or works better in one direction or works intermittely. You google it and they take you on a wild goose chase...and you spend hours trying this and that solution and find out not one of them works.

Here's a much simpler solution and I am not charging.

You search google or youtube for "how to disassemble and clean "add your brand of mouse here". Mine is a logitech M510 so I am posting the video for it.

Tools needed: tweezer (ask your wife if you don't have one), a small screwdriver ( I mean thin ), preferably magnetized so it can pick up the screw after you unscrew them. Magnetized screwdriver are more helpful when you are rebuilding the mouse. A toothpick to access spaces around the wheel that the tweezer can't access.

First shut down your computer. Turn off the mouse and remove the batteries.

To begin with, you don't really need to take the mouse completely apart as advertized on the video. Just the two screws (for my brand of mouse) and be gentle when you pull on things. Pay attention to how you removed a part. If you pull on it, you would have to push to get it back in. If you slided the part out, you would have to slide it back in. Don't force the parts to fit together.

when you take the mouse apart, you will be surprised by the amount of dust packed around the scroll wheel. With the tweezer, you can remove most of it. Then you use the toothpick to remove the dust you could not remove with the tweezer. In the end, you vaccuum your mouse.

Reassemble and you are ready to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBLaHWl_yjw&fbclid=IwAR0158WBEMa-psQal94Rnr-pME6KVCH0mNYP4iGqO1YJ_qaF8mdKGdCduec

Answer 3

Very very simple in my case... I just had to take out two screws and separate the top from the bottom. Very easy and simple. I didn't have to disassemble the mouse completely or watch an explanatory video. So I used a normal vacuum cleaner on the wheel. In my case it was full of cat fur.

Answer 4

Even more simple, which worked after seeing the great answer above, but without taking the mouse apart is this: Put the little round horse-hair vacuum head on your vacuum cleaner, and put it over the roller and turn vacuum on. Roll the wheel a few times as well and do it again each time. With a bit of luck, if it's just dust as explained above, it might dislodge before the option of pulling the mouse apart. Worth a try first! Thanks heaps for the heads-up on what the issue really was!