I have, like, three extra mice from older computers, (mouses). Just left overs from old p.c.'s. A current mouse fails today, so go down to the drawer of useless items and grab a backup, it fails. Go grab another, it fails. Grab my last one, it fails.

4 mouse failures in one day, in one hour! its laughable. Anyone else have a story of having a ridiculous amount of something you think you will never go through and in one day, POOF, gone.

Sounds more like a bad driver/jack/resource allocation. Four defective mice, particularly if they fail in similar ways, would be highly unlikely. Not impossible, just extremely improbable.

Yeah, I agree with Art. If any one of them is a Microsoft, unlike their reputation for software, those mice are nearly indestructible and go for YEARS of clicking.

Is this USB or PS/2? If I remember correctly (been years!) you could burn out a PS/2 port by unplugging it while the computer was one.

Wouldn't burn anything out usually, just lock up the port so you had to power cycle to get it working again.

I haven't used a mouse since 1998 when I bought my own laptop, I have an older laptop as a spare if somehting happend I can just swap the drive over.

Well, to keep more on OT...I checked my extended emergency gear, and tried out the lighters. I had 4 of them. Regular Bic type lighters. All 4 failed to work-the wheels were all frozen. These were brand new a couple years ago! Needless to say, its time to buy a new pack!
It may have been due to moisture-we did have a rather humid summer, and the wheels may have siezed due to that. Fortunately, they are simply backups to backups to secondary backups to primary backups to my main fire lighting source, so they werent mission critical. But, they all failed!

Make it a habit to check and test all gear every 5 months, I ususally do spring and fall, rotate any batteries or other consumables.

so true when we let gear set for months or years.

BTW, not a port problem on the mice. Had roller ball skipping, had middle scroller break (the current mouse), Had a bad button and one that just didn't move.

But this isn't about computer problems, its those laughable situations where we seem a bit overconfident on being prepared and it Epic Fails.

Batteries usually get changed-honestly, didnt even think about the lighters though. LEsson learned!

Sorta sounds to me like it was 4 mouse failures over the course of years without removing the bad ones from stock.

My wife does this. And I do too to a small extent. Not a good practice to put dead parts back on the shelf.


If I were to test all my gear every 5 months I'd have to be retired to have enough time to do it. I've accumulated a LOT of gear :-)

Reminded me:

"A blonde walks into a doctor’s office and tells the doctor she’s broken every single bone in her body. “That’s impossible!” says the doctor.

The blonde says, “No, it’s really true. Look!” She then touches her leg with her index finger and screams “Ouch!” Then she touches her arm and yells “Eeeeoooow!” Finally she touches her ribs and can barely maintain her composure as the tears start to roll down her face. She says, “See, I told you I broke every bone in my body.”

The doctor rubs his chin, then conducts a thorough examination. “Well, miss,” he tells her, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, you haven’t broken every bone in your body. The bad news is, you’ve broken your finger.”

---

Old mouses? Perhaps they were P/S mouses, not USB ones? They aren't designed to be hot swappable. You must shutdown, replace, start up again. And there is a 75% probability that if you try to hot swap them you can damage the P/S port microchip on the motherboard.