My wireless keyboard packed in so I bought a new one. Bizarrely, a keyboard and mouse combination was £8 cheaper than the same keyboard on its own. I though it would be best practice to use the new mouse as it shares the same dongle as the keyboard.
The new mouse worked very badly and kept losing contact, but the old mouse worked perfectly (separate dongles). I thought two dongles might be better. However, after removing one of the dongles and restarting I discovered the new mouse worked perfectly.
Is it the case that W10 cannot cope with two live mice (or is it mouses?) at the same time? Is it best to share a single dongle?
This reminds me of the football manager who was invited to the Sportswriter of the Year Annual Dinner. He replied 'I'm sorry but I can't manage' to which the response was 'All of Scotland knows that but you can still attend the Sportswriter of the year Annual Dinner'.
Study the operating principles of the two dongles.
They might be using the same frequency, but a different modulation and protocol, which are antagonistic to one another.
USB3 cables on operating equipment, throw off broad RF noise centered at 2.5GHz, and such cabling (like a backup drive you're using at the moment), should be kept away from the "air path" of the RF HID devices. Even a leaking microwave oven, can stop 2.4GHz devices from working properly.
If you plug in half a dozen wired mice and half a dozen wired keyboards, Windows 10 will use all of them at the same time. You can type on any keyboard, move any of the mice, and it works. (I have two keyboards on this machine right now, as testament that it works. The second keyboard has my working Prtscn key. I had three mice, a PS/2, a USB, and a RS232 serial mouse. Sometimes one of three, the driver would not load, and the RS232 serial mouse always worked!)
There's no question, that multiple early releases of Windows 10 had their problems with HID. But for the most part, it seems to be fixed. It would not surprise me, if I fired up Windows 11 and retested, that some of those problems would come back. They always seem to want to break stuff, so they'll have something to do.
When they broke my webcam, they never did fix that properly. It still presents the wrong resolution choices. Early in Windows 10, my webcam worked perfectly. When I video conference now, I use Windows 7.
I have heard though that if you are unlucky, you may find that the two dongles interfere. often I note tht putting one on a usb extension seems to resolve it. I cannot understand why, unless they all work on the same frequency and its only the digital coding that identifies the device pairing. I'm assuming this is Logitech which is the one I have. Brian
That's a good assumption. It is Logitech, as was the old mouse. I can see now that having a single dongle for keyboard and mouse is the safer option. Last night, again I had trouble with the mouse running slow. I wonder if Windows was up to something in the background.
PS Why is it still called a mouse now that the tail has been removed?
It's possible the chip for the unifying receiver is not made any more. Which would require products made more recently, to use a different receiver.
As long as they faithfully label products with logos, that should give you a good idea whether the tech is still available.
"Although not compatible with Bluetooth, devices pair to Unifying Receivers in a similar way. Peripherals remain paired, and can then be used on systems not supporting the [pairing] software."
So depending on the dongle family used with yours, there may be technical info about how to work with them.
And using pure Bluetooth devices, is another possibility.
Some of the mice, the array sensor has amazing motion detection properties. They are nothing like some of the past implementations, where even with a special mouse pad with grid on it, the mouse was not reliable.
Some of them can run on a polished-up glass sheet, they are that good.
But the RF portion, is always a weakness. There are lots of emissions at 2.4GHz to screw it up. Bluetooth was a valiant attempt, with its frequency hopping and bins, but if the interference is broad (like the USB3 peak is), all the bins can be wiped out at the same time.
Bluetooth is robust enough, two piconets can work within range of one another. The hopping patterns don't collide too often. Bluetooth and Wifi coexist as well, so a Wifi should only knock out specific Bluetooth bins, leaving the other bins to work. You could look up the channel usage for this, and see if your 2.4GHz Wifi router can be moved to a frequency that has less impact on Bluetooth (or Unifying).
TX+ TX- GND RX+ RX- VCC D+ D- GND \-------------/ USB2 device only touches these contacts
\----------------------------------/ USB3 devices touch all nine, negotiate with USB2, run over USB3, the USB3 emits
The computer does not need to energize the TX/RX interface, if the PNP info says "I am USB2 only".
The USB2 is not known to interfere with wireless communications. There would be some signal there, but there's no warning about, that it's an issue. Whereas for USB3, Intel wrote a white paper on the topic, about USB3 RF leakage and equipment design to suppress it.
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