If you happen to got one Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000, either got it individually or from the Wireless Desktop 3000 (Like I did), you might found that the scrolling wheel doesn’t behave as usual that found in a normal mouse. It is noticeable having issue with Google Picasa (for zooming in and out), Adobe Photoshop, Open Office etc. where the scrolling wheel doesn’t do what is expected to do.

Having the hugely frustrated issue, I searched for the reason behind it. There is a user called niver has been explained his point of view about this issue:

Most (almost all) mouse drivers cause mouse wheel events with a "delta" of ±120. This is an arbitrary value that has been chosen by Microsoft in the past to allow finer control.
Since then, several programs use that value directly to test whether the mouse has been scrolled down or up (delta / 120 == 1 -> down, delta / 120 == -1 -> up, or something like that).
However, the Intellipoint software causes mouse wheel events with smaller "delta" value (the expected finer grain control), and programs which use the 120 value that way just fail to register the wheel movement, because in integral values, 30 / 120 = 0… [Source: Picasa support forum].

Solution?

In order to solve this issue, there is a quick workaround, although it might not entirely solving the issue, but the scroll wheel is now more usable.

1. Install IntelliPoint 7.1 (32 bit/64 bit) – The version must be 7.1, the latest version 8.0 cannot be used for this workaround. If you have version 8.0 installed, uninstall it first then install the version 7.1.
2. Change connected device type – Enter the Mouse Properties (Search Microsoft Mouse if you doesn’t have the shortcut placed on the desktop), then change the Connected device type from Wireless Mouse 5000 to Arc Mouse. Click OK to quit the dialog.

After the changes, you will find that the scroll wheel of your Wireless Mouse 5000 behave slightly better than before. In Google Picasa, at least the zooming in/out worked. You might want to adjust the scrolling sensitivity to the lowest so that the scrolling speed is at the acceptable rate after this workaround.

This workaround doesn’t guaranteed to work on all applications, but so far this issue bugged me the most in Google Picasa, and this workaround works well, therefore this workaround might not for everyone.  

Alternative Solution

If you wasn’t keen to change the connected device to other mouse, or you want a complete solution (workaround), you have another two options (although I did not try any of them):

1. Uninstall IntelliPoint and use the default driver in Windows.
2. Use AutoHotkey to solve application specific issue by a script (since it only having issues with some specific applications). If you prefer to do this, check the small guide posted by niver on the script and the way to use AutoHotkey to solve this issue.

Good luck for solving this frustrating issue. It is a shame that despite of a high quality build product, such small issue can actually destroy the entire user experience. Let’s hope Microsoft aware of this issue and fix the issue in the next version of IntelliPoint.

As usual, if you have any better solution to this, don’t hesitate to share it here!