On 29 October 2015 at 04:13, Tim <ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
Patrick O'Callaghan sent:
>> As I said, the mouse works on another system. I should also mention
>> that the mouse light is on, i.e. it does have power.

If it wasn't too late to bother, I would have asked whether it stayed
lit continually, or you only saw a light some of the time.

The light is continuous and has never flickered. In fact it stays on even when the battery is almost dead and it won't connect any more. 

>> I'm leaning towards thinking the problem isn't with the mouse but
>> with the dongle (if in fact it's a hardware issue at all).

> I found an old dongle lying around and tried it. It works. The
> conclusion seems obvious (though not clear).
>
> Thanks to everyone who tried to help. I don't think it's worth
> pursuing this any further. I just wonder why my logs show repeated
> problems loading the driver (going back months) but nevertheless the
> old dongle seemed to work until now.

I would guess an intermittent fault that grew into becoming permanent.
Most likely component failure, or the soldering.

Now you've got a working replacement, you could try being brutal to the
bad one.  Bang it a few times, hard, see if the thing suddenly starts
working again.  You often see that with soldering faults.  And you know
the device deserves it for messing you about.  ;-)

Maybe I'll try that :-)

poc