Weird mouse problem after replacing my keyboard

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Level 1

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Weird mouse problem after replacing my keyboard

This is a bit long-winded so please bear with me... I've a Mac Pro here (about 3 years old) running Mojave. I use a Genius (i.e. PC style) keyboard and Microsoft mouse (actually, a TrackerBall). A couple of

days ago the keyboard failed and I needed to buy a new one. I managed to find another Genius k/bd but it's not the same model as last time. However when I booted up Mojave again, everything seemed okay. The monitor worked, the new k/bd worked and I could see the mouse moving.

BUT - I've now a really strange problem... Whenever I click the mouse, the horizontal co-ordinate works as expected - but vertically, no matter where I click the mouse, it seems to think I've clicked right down at the bottom of the screen :-( I can dual-boot here into Windows and Windows is still working fine.

Is there some way I can tell Mojave to re-configure / re-calibrate the mouse so that it'll work normally again?

Mac Pro

Posted on Mar 5, 2022 3:06 AM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

245,489 points

Mar 5, 2022 12:11 PM in response to johne53

Start with this...

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

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Answer 2

johne53 Author

Level 1

14 points

Mar 6, 2022 1:15 AM in response to BDAqua

Many thanks for the suggestion.

I had a minor breakthrough here... when I left-click anything, the mouse cursor drops to the bottom of the screen. But I realised that if I continue to hold the LH key and then move the mouse very slightly (before releasing the key) it almost acts as if I'd clicked normally.

Having said that, I'm not sure Safe Mode worked for me. I held down the Shift key here but nothing seemed any different. It booted up in the same time and it looked the same and behaved the same. Is there an alternative procedure for activating Safe Mode? e.g. if I'm booted normally, can I set anything to indicate that the next boot should be in Safe Mode?

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Answer 3

johne53 Author

Level 1

14 points

Mar 6, 2022 4:01 AM in response to johne53

FWIW i just found a terminal command which supposedly allows to boot in Safe Mode:- sudo nvram boot-args=“-x” but when I typed it here it gave me this reply:- nvram: Error setting variable - 'boot-args' : (iokit/common) not permitted

Any ideas ?

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Answer 4

johne53 Author

Level 1

14 points

Mar 7, 2022 2:35 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks again - I'm already using a wired k/bd and no, I didn't encrypt the drive - BUT....

This is slightly weird but simply moving the mouse to a different USB port has fixed the problem!! The only embarrassing bit is that I didn't think of doing that in the first place :-(

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