What Happened to My Mouse?
Christina Tynan-Wood on May 14 2008 at 5:32 am | Filed under: Issues, Learning, Tips
A letter from a reader…and a response from your Geek Girlfriend
Dear Geek Girlfriend,
I need help! I sat down at my computer today, facing an enormous deadline, a play at my daughter’s school I want to see at lunch, and a conference call in the afternoon for which I have to keep the minutes. Today—of all days—I really need to use Word (07 under Vista) so naturally this is the day my mouse decides to take a vacation. But only in Word! I can use the menus but I can’t select text or scroll through documents. I tried restarting Word but it crashes when I do that. I haven’t installed anything new but Windows did do an automatic update last night. I have no idea how to fix this and no time to get help. Is there anything you can do?
Desperate in Denver
Dear Desperate,
I plan to write a strongly worded letter to Microsoft about this one myself. I have no idea how common a problem this is but it has happened to me twice so it can’t be too obscure. The solution is not hard but it is difficult to find. Directions are here at Microsoft’s Help and Support site.
You have to edit the registry which sounds scarier than it is and delete a file that seems like it should be important. But if you follow Microsoft’s quick 6–step instructions to the letter, you don’t have to know what you are doing or fear disaster. I’ve done it twice now and it has fixed my problem both times in very short order.
Good luck with the deadline and get to that play!
[...] are causing havoc for users of Word 2007, including crippling the mouse driver. As described by Christina Wood in her Geek Girlfriends blog, the problem happens whenever Word is open and Update decides to reboot your computer for you. The [...]