I’ve always had troubles with the Microsoft Wireless Desktop 6000 and before it the Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite not scrolling correctly in iTunes and more recently Picasa. The scrolling was very slow in these applications and a lot of the time seemed to not work at all. It would take frantic scrolling of the wheel to make the listings move just a couple of lines. Completely useless.
My sister is visiting for a couple of weeks and I was complaining about the issue to her when she suggested I try her notebook mouse — It worked perfectly.
The fix is actually pretty simple — change the type of mouse in the IntelliPoint Mouse Properties window to something different. I now have my Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 setup as a Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. I simply chose this mouse because it has the same number of buttons as mine. Once it’s changed iTunes and Picasa scrolled correctly. Everything else still scrolls fine too (web pages, etc.) however I did find I needed to turn the sensitivity down a fair bit otherwise it was quite jumpy.
I had looked into this a couple of weeks ago and found a forum post that mentioned the same fix and there were a couple of other sites that linked to this Microsoft Help & Support article (or a similar one with the same basic fix) as well but when I tried changing mine to an earlier IntelliMouse Explorer and a couple of others it made no difference. So if it doesn’t work the first time keep selecting different types of mice until you find one that keeps all your buttons and works!
UPDATE
In the excitement of finally having iTunes and Picasa scrolling properly I neglected to test the solution fully. After a couple of reboots the mouse went back to its same old frustrating not-scrolling-properly ways in those programs. Even after a full reinstall of Windows (due to an unrelated matter) I still could not get the mouse to scroll properly no matter what I tried. On top of that, the keyboard has started not picking up all the letters I typed. Especially the CTRL and Question Mark keys.
The final solution? Buy Logitech.
My absolute final solution for these issues was to buy a Logitech wired keyboard and Logitech wireless mouse. I bought the Logitech G15 Keyboard and MX 1100 mouse. The mouse scrolls perfectly in every program I use it in and the keyboard does not miss letters typed or need a bulky wireless receiver sitting right next to it to make it work (completely negating the entire purpose of having it wireless I might add).



January 11th, 2009 at 8:54 am
My new microsoft mouse doesn’t scroll Picasa either and I’m looking for how to make it work. I already had a kensington mouse that didn’t work with Vista at all. I assumed this MS moused would… but of course it’s microshaft!
March 4th, 2009 at 5:43 am
I have the same problem. I have just bought a new Microsoft mouse which doesn’t scroll in Picasa or iTunes on Vista. Someone on another thread suggested uninstalling the intellipoint software, but I haven’t tried this yes.
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
I tried uninstalling intellitype as well. Suprise! It worked! Then I rebooted. And once again the scrolling fails very hard in itunes.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:38 am
I have a working solution.
Install intellipoint onto your machine.
Copy the the Microsoft Intellipoint folder from Program files to somewhere else.
Uninstall intellipoint.
Restart
Find your mouse in the device manager.
Update the drivers with the drivers in the intellipoint folder.
My mouse scrolls fine now even after a restart.
June 7th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
THANK YOU JOSHUA!!! Your workaround worked perfectly!!!
August 28th, 2009 at 5:54 am
Thanks Joshua your suggestion has finally solved my problem.
September 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Hey guys, I had this problem for a while after getting a microsoft 7000 wireless notebook mouse. I updated to the just-released iTunes 9 today and the scrolling problem is gone!
October 13th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Worked a treat, Thanks You, why can’t Microsoft publish on an ongoing basis these kinds of workarounds on a separate site, where third person fixes would be published and THANKED
November 7th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Joshua’s solution worked for me – thanks a lot!
December 20th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Great fix, thanks for the work around.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:05 am
Joshua… you are a genius!! Worked like a charm… Thank you!
January 11th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Thanks Joshua… I’m using Windows 7 and a Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000, worked perfectly for me.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
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