Mouse behaving weird in Lion

I recently installed Lion to my PC and things were working perfectly fine and I was quite satisfied with the whole experience. But recently I am facing an extremely weird situation and I am left in trouble, deep down. The issue basically is with my mouse. It is showing one of those bizarre behavior which turns irritating of high level.

What actually happens is that the cursor of the mouse behaves as it wants irrespective of what I want it to do. No, it has not turned independent! It has become disobedient. The cursor shoots to the directions it wants to go, or goes to corners of the screen as per its own wish. It also keeps jumping and at times it disappears without any warning. And after a few minutes, it reappears forcing me to go mad and shut the PC down. I assumed that my mouse has gone mad and there is some major issue with it. But whenever I restart my PC, to my surprise the reboot solves the issue for me. Isn’t this weird? But the issue comes back in a few minutes. To, the best of my surprise, the mouse works perfectly fine with Windows, it obeys as expected and works simply perfect.

During my research on this issue I can across n-number of threads and posts which spoke about the same issue. And everyone reported that the issue started after installation of Lion. All of them have tried with other mice but it hardly did any good. And this proves that this issue is not at all limited to any of my system specification and the issue definitely doesn’t revolve around my PC, it’s the Lion which is causing this issue for us.

I have been using Tragus Bluetooth Mouse for Mac and it has been working great since last three years. It is an awesome mouse and I simply love using it. It looks awesome with better features than most available in the league. It has hell lot of buttons to chose from which simply makes the operation easy. And the thing that I actually love about it is its super cool round touchpad area in the middle which is like WOW! Another wow factor about the mouse is the fact that it scrolls to all directions possible and does wonders. However, I am not here to praise my mouse but what I was getting at was that when I have this mouse in Launchpad whenever I try to scroll it sideways, it goes to the right. It scrolls to the right even when the mouse’s scroll control is attempted to be swiped to the left. You scroll it to any side, it has to move to right! But, it scrolls as desired as perfectly everywhere apart from this like iTunes or Safari and all.

The issue as you rightly assumed is definitely not with the hardware of your mouse. But issue might lie with the settings of the mouse! You never know. Since you have tried it with Windows and it was working fine, the issue might be with the OS specific setting of the mouse. You can definitely alter it. I would be enlisting all possible changes you can make to the mouse settings. Try each setting and use the mouse. I am sorry for all the trouble but since yours is a No-cause issue as of now. It is a bit difficult to come up with a straight cut solution and give you 5-6 lined steps which will surely solve your issue. So, we have no other go but to play with the settings available. The changes in mouse settings may not surely save your issue but it should definitely make some difference. To change the mouse setting, you need to go to Mouse System Preferences pane which is visibly available in OS X Lion where you can possibly set your mouse settings as desired.
If what you have is a notebook Mac and not a desktop, you will find the Mouse icon which is easily found in the application named ‘System Preferences’. But unless and until you connect the mouse either via USB or via Bluetooth, it will be a disabled thing and will be searching for a non-existent mouse.

The very first thing that you will probably notice in the pane that opens is a check box and this is a brand new setting added to Mac OS X Lion. The checkbox should read: ‘Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating. if at all, for you, the navigation that Windows provide appears reverse, uncheck the box and see.
Some other possible settings alteration that you can are as listed below. Follow them and check if anyone of them makes any difference:
• Try moving the Tracking Speed Slider which will be useful for changing the connection that exists between the hand movement that exists between the mouse and the cursor
• There also a setting called Double Click Speed setting. It is used to determine and set the speed or the closeness between two different clicks which will assist Mac in interpreting and differentiating between 2 different clicks and double click
• There is another setting which is called the scrolling speed slider and it is what allows you to adjust and alter the speed of scrolling when you scroll the mouse
This setting remains inactive for mice without a scroll ball or scroll wheel and the ones with this can avail this feature.
• Another option that you will notice and would like to give a try would be the radio buttons available for setting the primary button. This option helps you chose the primary option that tha button which execute and will mean a regular click. The other button, conversely becomes the secondary button
Again, this feature needs a mouse with multiple button, single-button mouse has no setting of this sort
• The last yet a very effective option which is the Zoom Using Scroll Wheel While Holding checkbox which lets us zoom the page and the window up and down but simply pressing the scroll button and holding it that way and moving it up and down. However, this can be done with a default key of Control which pressing of which and moving the scroll, we can zoom in and out as per our wish. This will basically make the items on the screen larger and smaller, the way we want it to, the default button of Ctrl can be changed here.

This is quite an irritating problem. Nobody can understand the issue better than me at this moment because I am facing the same. I am sure Dabert is expcting a reply if at all this solution worked. No it did not. I tried it too. But I must tell you, your post actually helped me find a lot of solutions to what I expected did not exist only. There were many interesting settings which I would love to use only if my mouse works proper. I mean, imagine I have some awesome settings to use but cant do anything about it. Thanks to the stupid mouse issue I am facing.
At my end, the problem is almost the same but still I would like to explain it if at all you all happen to find some sort of peculiarity in it.
I use a Logitech performance mx mouse and as Logikar mentioned even I love my mouse as much as he does. It is awesome and the best one I could find. I just love it when I am using it. Anyways, my launchpad becomes extremely uncontrollable wit the mouse that I just spoke about. It doesn’t move or scroll as expected. It doesn’t let us scroll properly to any direction of our choice. Whenever I try doing that, it either immediately changes it’s direction leading to selection and choices that I never intended to make. Or else when I try to scroll it, it stops completely for a second or two and then when I move to select some application say on the right side of the screen. There is some inertia acting on it and making the scroll bounce back to the opposite side of the existing panes. This is so difficult for a lazy ass like me when I have to actually change my sitting position and lean towards the screen to check the working.

I have spoken to an expert in my contact and he have suggested me a way that probably works the best… what you need to do is to follow the below given steps in the most perfect way possible:

# You need to first turn the computer off and unplug it from the switch board
# after that you should be holding down the power button for 5 seconds or more.
# plug it again then after which you need to reset the PRAM

I have faced a very very similar issue as reported by the Logikar and Affy. The issue is quite irritating I must say. I have tried hell lot of things as suggested online and as suggested by the Apple care team, but all to vain, it just wasted my hours and I yielded nothing at all out of the answers provided.
That is when I finally happened to meet a friend of mine who suggested a better solution that seems to have worked for me. The solution is to reset the PRAM and NVRAM of the system.

Here, PRAM which actually stands for Parameter Random Access Memory and it contains some vital information on it. Basically, a PRAM stores information that are related to system and device and are saved in locations where the Mac OS X can easily reach and access. However, the exact content of PRAM varies from machine to machine and every computer settings are configured with different informations on PRAM. It also varies considering the type of computer and the devices and drivers which are connected to the system. And PRAM is basically just a very small area in Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM).

The information stored on PRAM basically includes the following and it is saved there with an aim of east access.
- It stores some very important display and video details and settings which includes refresh rate, screen resolution, number of colors, mouse movement
- It also has details about the start up volume of the PC as in, that remains default almost for the rest of PC’s life
- The speaker’s volume which you set from the system tray available also gets saved here and is retrieved as per requirement
- In case there has been any sort of Kernel Panic in recent times, the details about it is solved in the PRAM
- All the settings pertaining to CD, DVD and Floppy is saved in this area too.

Having said all that, I would prefer some better expert to go ahead with the steps since I am not good at it and I hardly remember them. If there’s no voluntary participation, I’ll start

Yes sure, let me do that for you. It is not a very difficult task but impeccable concentration is expected. Also, before going ahead with the resetting process, you need to take care of the following thing.
If at all your system is not retaining the settings of PRAM during the period when it’s not On, assume that it’s battery needs to be changed.


The steps to be followed in order to reset the PRAM and NVRAM are as stated below:

1. Before going ahead with the resetting process, I need you to please shut your system totally down for some time till next instruction
2. Find the keys which read ‘Command’, ‘Option’, ‘P’, ’R’. this for Its application on the fourth step
3. Now, in order to reset your PRAM, you need to turn your system on for further instruction
4. Even before the grey screen appears, you need to press and hold the buttons listed above viz; ‘Command’, ‘Option’, ‘P’, ’R’.
5. You need to hold these keys till the computer decides to restart and you need to hear the startup sound again
6. Now, as soon as you get through this, you can possibly release all the keys and your Resetting seems to be done
7. All our computer’s PRAM and NVRAM details are set back to default values. Only on certain models, the clock setin is also set to default.