How to Fix a Sticky Scroll Wheel on a Logitech Mouse
How is your mouse wheel holding up? If it’s sticking or just not working as well as when you first got it, here’s how to go in and fix it.
How is your mouse wheel holding up? If it’s sticking or just not working as responsively as when you first got it, that’s actually quite common. I think most of us will agree that Logitech makes quality wireless mice, but it isn’t immune to mouse wheel problems. Luckily, most of them can be solved by simply cleaning out the mouse wheel chamber, and this will show you how to do that for most Logitech mouse models.
Fix Sticky Scroll Wheel Logitech Mouse
What you’ll need
- A very small-headed Phillips screwdriver.
- A small flathead screwdriver or a butter knife.
- A small piece of stock paper or a Q-tip.
- Optional: Compressed air can
So, you have the mouse, and it’s ready for maintenance. To do any work on it, we will first have to separate the top shell from the bottom—the bottom cases, the tech components, and the batteries and optical or laser sensor. Flip the mouse and get ready to work.
The first thing you’ll need to do is turn off the Mouse and pull out the batteries.
Next, we need to expose all of the screw holes. Most Logitech models have 3 or 4 screw holes. These are located underneath the larger surface pads, so you’ll have to remove them. The easiest way to do this is by prying them with a butter knife or a flat screwdriver. Just do it slowly, and they won’t be damaged. Additionally, you may need to remove a battery sticker to expose a screw hiding in the battery bay.
Important Tip
- If you remove the surface pads and battery sticker carefully, you can reuse them. The underside has an adhesive, so try not to let it touch anything except for the part of the mouse it is supposed to attach to.
Unscrew all of the screws, and the top shell should separate from the bottom of the mouse. Don’t force it apart! It should be effortless to separate if you feel any resistance at all. It is likely because you missed a screw.
Once you have the mouse open, one long cable will connect the top to the bottom. This cable can be unplugged to make things easier. On the bottom half of the mouse, the connection port is easy to access. Make a mental note of which side is which because it will need to be reinserted facing the same way. In the case of my mouse, the red line is facing outwards away from the center of the device.
Gently pull on the cord to remove it. Close to its end, there should be hard plastic reinforcement to make pulling it out safer.
Now you’ll have unhindered access to the bottom components of the mouse. This is where you grab a Q-tip or piece of stock paper and do some cleaning. Just insert it around the sides and scrape out as much as you possibly can. Compressed air can also come in handy. If you’ve had your mouse for a year or longer, then chances are a lot of dust, lint, and fuzz will come out of the mouse wheel chamber as you clean it.
- Note – It’s possible to completely remove the mouse wheel from the chamber and give it a thorough cleaning. However, this can be very complicated in precision and performance models as springs, and other mechanisms are easy to mess up.
Once it is cleaned, all you have to do is reassemble the mouse in the reverse order.
- Attach the long cable from the top to the bottom.
- Put the mouse together and reinsert all of the screws.
- Test the mouse wheel to make sure it works.
- If it works, place the surface pads back over the screw holes, re-insert batteries. Done!
- If it doesn’t work, try cleaning out the mouse wheel chamber some more.
I hope this helps anyone who has issues with an unresponsive mouse wheel. I’ve had my Logitech MX1100 Pro for about three years now, and it recently started acting up. After this process, I found that it had an entire ball of lint gathered up beneath the wheel in the mouse chamber. With the lint removed, the mouse is working just as it did the day I opened it out of the retail box.
If this were a wired mouse, I wouldn’t go through all the trouble, but wireless isn’t as cheap and disposable. I’d love to hear feedback from anyone who tries this or has already done something similar to fix mouse wheel issues on any brand of mouse.
25 Comments
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Sabz
Thank you this helped a lot.
I had a grating noise issue comming from my wheel in free mode, on my 4 year old MX1100.
I followed your tutorial, cleaned the wheel with a stock paper and now the noise is gone.
The wheel is now running perfecty smoothy, without any annoying noise.
You saved me from buying a brand new 70€ logitech mouse. Tanks again.
Al Thompson
My Logitech is a totally different model but based on your excellent post I went for it and now it works better than ever. The wheel totally locked up in forward roll. My only option (other than using the hated finger pad on my old Mac iBook G4) was to buy another one at WalMart. On a hunch, before tossing the older mouse I did a quick search on malfunctioning mice, found your post, and decided to tear into it. After all, I was going to toss it anyway. Mine was a smaller one, held together with only one screw in the battery cavity. I removed the screw and slid the bottom case forward, disengaging two prongs holding the front together. as you said, the wheel was gunked up with miniature dust-bunnies, lint, skin grease, and just about everything but dead bees. But the real culprit was a tiny friction spring prong that had somehow gotten under the rim of the pliable “tire” on the solid plastic wheel hub, keeping the wheel from turning forward. With tweezers I pulled the wheel tension (by friction) wire end from between the hub and its outer covering and let it ride against the outer backside surface, allowing the wheel to rotate while keeping it from spinning freely. I replaced everything in reverse order, unplugged the new mouse receiver freom the
USB port, stuck the old one back in and it works like a charm. Now I have a spare. Thanks for giving me the courage to go into it and do the obvious. BTW, On my mouse there is no electrical wire to disconnect. All the electronics are built into the upper part of the clamshell (the lower part when on its back for disassembly). The wheel assembly and battery compartment are the only things built into the base holding thewheel. Only one small Phillips head screw holds the upper and lower clamshells together.
MARYANN
THANK YOU ! My mouse was driving me crazy, and google to find your post. Worked like a charm. :)
Al Thompson
Glad you had the courage to get into it and that you were successful, MARYANN. There are variances between Mice, but they all function pretty much on the same principle. Logitech has discovered that folks are fixing, rather than tossing and buying a replacement, depriving them of profit. They are now intentionally (?) making them more difficult to take apart. clean, and reassemble.
After a newer, smaller one got gunked-up and I cleaned it, I discovered that on re-assembly that little loose on-off sliding switch lever on the bottom was near impossible to impossible to keep in position while the clamshells were screwed back in place. I solved the problem by placing some sticky tape over the outside (underside) surface of the lower clamshell so it would also stick to underside of the little little lever, holding it in place long enough to screw the bottom section it into place. Make sure that the lever is in the proper position to engage the prongs of its switch on the opposing part of the assembly when positioning it onto the tape. (Not as complicated as it sounds.) So I beat the Logitech engineers in their attempt to force me to repair, rather than toss it and buy another.
Dr. Mike Wendell
Weird. No screw holes on the bottom of mine. Thanks anyway.
Harry
Chinese sometime put screws under label between battery and mouse itself into the battery chamber. Label is the same color mouse plastic has. :-)
Thanks for no-disassembling wheel chamber cleaning method.
Szen
Totally works on mine!Thanks.
Rondall
I have the same exact mouse. When I started following directions from another website, I was like, this ain’t gonna work. Then i found this. I’m thankful.
Austin Krause
Awesome! I’m glad it helped!
Joseph Fixder
I have different Logitech mouse, but Even with the RUST on one side of my WHEEL , after cleaning, it spins just like she waaas brand new!
Brand new condition was where it could do the largest static webpage or document drilling straight in is just insane it goes and goes and goes either to the top or bottom scrolling with one flick of the wheel. (Sorry that isn’t a scientific explanation but those with the mouse will know exactly what I mean)
Probably not required but I used a little 91% alcohol where goo was stubborn, and paper towels instead of q-tip. I also had compressed air. Things were not looking good until the compressed air and boom she came back from the dead after puking out a couple green lint balls.
I mostly concentrated on getting the hair like filaments out and stop sticking to sides of wheel
I can’t imagine working in a PET SHOP!!! ;o)
Don’t forget the cylinder that hits the laser optics for filaments/hairs.
Good Day Sir Thank you!
Thomas
The real challenge – as somebody already posted before – was to find the “top secret” screw under the label between battery and mouse. This seems to be unique to this model.
Identifying the model (MX1100 Pro) in order to google for information was the other challenge (the info can’t be found anywhere on the device itself but only on the transmitter).
Many thanks @Austin Krause!
Stomms
Tryed to fix My MX1100 wheel problem by this manual, everything went smoothly, I cleaned mouse wheel mechanism with compressed air and contact cleaner spray. After puting everything together wheel was working fine. But half of a day later red light started to flash on mouse and mouse stopped working, pointer is not moving anymore:(
Battery replacement doesn’t help. Any suggestions?
Jackson
For a quick fix, you can also just blow into your mouse holes.
Steve Krause
Um yes… I’ve probably done this a million times myself. ;)
Bakeca Incontri Udine
I managed to fix it by removing the wheel, washing it with hot water and put it back in. Now it works as it was new :D
Mike
Thank you for this tutorial, it really helped me. Thanks for taking the time to write it up, with pictures.
My mouse wheel was actually stuck in the free-scrolling mode (without the clicks), since one of the pieces got loose when the mouse fell on the floor. Although this tutorial didn’t address the problem directly, it helped me figure it out and fix it.
Thanks again!
Richard Penner
I found that my wheel was extremely free-wheeling in that it would wander to another position after taking my finger off the wheel. Sometimes backward or sometimes would continue forward.
What I did was about as low-tech as it could be. On the right click side of the wheel it seems free of equipment so I took lightly waxed dental floss, taped it to the wheel with a tiny piece of tape, gave it three revolutions of the wheel, tied it off and the floss gives the wheel enough resistance to keep it from free-wheeling. Simple fix but it works.
ko1967
Thanks for the write up. I have a Logitech M510. Took it apart and found that the rubber that covers the wheels was coming unglued in certain spots and thus was rubbing when that area got to the bottom. Had to replace. Posting just in case others have the M510 and cleaning it doesn’t help.
mmlopez
I have the same model and was experiencing the same problem after cleaning it, but after reading your comment I just removed the rubber “tire” from the wheel and it works perfectly. In fact, I like it better now. No need to replace it.
Al Thompson
These mice aren’t rocket science. The two I worked on were easy fixes, mostly by removing accumulated lint and body grease from the wheels. Sometimes there will be a tiny tensioning spring off-track interfering with the wheel rotation. The problems are largely mechanical and obvious when you get access to the guts. The makers also love to hide screws under labels and the little foot pads. You can either re-glue the pads back on or just leave them off, which I do. The mouse might even work better with closer contact to the surface it slides on.
.
ThumbOne
I was lucky my Logitech mouse had only one easy screw in battery compartment and the top came off easily. Wheel stayed in lid rest in base, and no cable. Simply blew dust out from around the wheel, in fact only one side is used for the scroll detection (a serrated side) and it works fine again.
Marcio
Hi there!
Your instructions are great.
In my case, when I cleaned the wheel it got better, but not enough… The real magic happened after I blew some air under the wheel. Both actions were important, as they are complementary.
As you said: it became working again as if it was just taken out of the box.
Thanks a lot.
Steve Krause
Hi Marcio! Thank you for the details. Appreciate your comment.
Al Thompson
Glad you got it working again Marcio. Due to political pressure mice will likely be made in the USA in the future and things might get either better or more difficult. The basic design, however will likely remain the same. I’ve fixed several mice for myself and friends. The ideal would be to remove debris AND body grease with tweezers, followed by a brief blast of compressed air, and lastly cleansing with a mild solvent like alcohol on a Q-tip.
Alan B
This was helpful, but with my Logitech MX Ergo, the mouse wheel developed resistance.
I was able to open it, clean it with alcohol and it freed up. There was no visible fuzz or dust.
Soon after, resistance returned. I’ve cleaned it a few times now. Sometimes it loosens for a bit, then resistance returns a couple of hours or days later, then it frees up again for awhile.
I’m not sure what is happening. It was resistant this morning, then freed up for several hours and now resistance is returning.
Any thoughts?