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.
>> 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. ;-)