Mouse gone wonky in Leopard

I'm a huge Mac fan. If you know me, you are probably painfully aware of this fact. I also would like to think of myself as pretty darn Mac-savvy. If you'd describe a problem you're having with your Mac (yes, Macs do indeed have problems), I'd start rattling off how to solve it. So, imagine my frustration when my iMac at home starts misbehaving and completely stymies me for days on end.

Here's the scenario: I'm using my iMac, running Mac OS X 10.5.6 with all the latest exciting updates, and I notice that things are not as they should be. Hovering over the dock icons does not display the name of each item as the mouse passes over it. Clicking on a menu and moving the mouse over one of the items in the menu does not highlight it. Hyperlinks in both Firefox and Safari do not display the URL when the mouse moves over them, nor does the arrow change into a hand. For Pete's sake, the Finder won't even let me click and drag an icon from a window when it is in list view (icon view works just dandy).

I pull out my bag of troubleshooting tricks and set to figuring out this conundrum. I figure, the poor thing has been running for several weeks without a reboot, it must be all confused. I'll just reboot it, sit back, and chalk it up once again to the reboot trick. Wrong! Maybe something went south and I need to reinstall the latest OS update. Off I go to download the Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update and install away. No dice. Maybe I need to check the drive. Reboot from another volume and run a Repair from Disk Utility. No problems found. That's interesting. Reboot again and still no love. At that point, play time was over. I had a nagging fear that I would need to completely wipe the drive and reinstall everything from scratch.

A few days later, I'm using my MacBook Pro at home and I need to grab a file off of my iMac. I fire up Apple Remote Desktop, connect to my iMac, and start poking around. After a while, it dawns on me that everything is working fine. Happy as a lark, I pat myself on the back and wipe that problem off the To Do list. Boy was I wrong.

So, inevitably, the next time I use my iMac, I again discover, to my dismay, that the problem is still there. It's driving me nuts. What could be causing this problem? I try logging in as another user to see if it is something specific to my account. Nope -- same problem still. I boot from another volume and proceed to check the drive again and then I realized that the problems were still occurring on the other volume. Now, that's just really strange. I begin to fear that my computer is dying a slow, painful death.

That's when I look at my mouse. Being a true geek, I naturally have upgraded to a wireless mouse from the stock Apple-issue Mighty Mouse. Hmmm...maybe this thing needs new batteries? I pop two new batteries in and still the problem persists. Well, it seems like a stupid thing to try, but let's unplug the wireless receiver for the mouse from the computer and plug it back in. That solved the problem. I do not understand why, but everything is working great again.

Lesson learned: Sometimes the solution to a problem is so simple that it just doesn't make a lick of sense. I want the hours I wasted on this back!