20130204_0313_DSLR-A850_07115_85 mm

How to get a 15 year old mouse to be working in Windows 8 and even better than ever before.

 

So, early on at university, must have been around 1998/1999, my friends gave me a voucher for my birthday. I think it was something like 80 DM. I went and bought this Logitech Mouseman Wheel USB. It has lived with me for the last years. Logitech supplied a driver suite that allowed to customise the thumb button. I think XP might have supported it natively, even.

 

I always had the thumb button set to "ENTER". I had friends tell me that this is odd, but it really makes operating Windows so much easier.

 

Anyway, after upgrading to Windows 8, I found that it does not work. And Logitech does no longer offer a driver for Windows 8. It's only like 15 years?! Even though it was "only" a voucher gift, I had a sentimental attachment to the mouse - helped by it being really well-made and practical. Googling brought up that there are at least two other people with that problem...

 

So, I quickly found that the button does *something* - it goes back in the browsing history in Firefox.

Then I found that the button identifies as the fourth mouse button in Windows.

From there it is a quick thing to use a software that replaces certain inputs with other inputs:

www.autohotkey.com/

Upon starting the tiny freeware utility Auto Hot Key for the first time, you will be able to generate an example script.

Just replace the commands therein with

 

XButton1::Enter

 

and place the AutoHotKey.ahk file into

 

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp

 

for all users, or

 

C:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

 

for the users whom you want to benefit from this ;)

This will auto-start (auto-execute) the script at each Window start.

 

Thanks to www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1083147-auto-start-a-program/ for the info on the correct directories in Win8.

 

So, there you are! Thanks to AutoHotKey, my 15 year old mouse is now more powerful than it ever was.

I still have the thumb button as ENTER, though :)

 

PS: This also works in Windows 7, Vista and XP.

 

 

 

 

Done