alright, so in case you might have missed it, all the old mouse optim­iz­a­tion tutorials and the DLL files you’re sup­posed to replace won’t work with your brand new win­dows 7 64-​bit oper­ating system. 64-​bit oper­ating sys­tems have pretty much become standard now, and applic­a­tions have come out to enable you to change your mouse polling from the standard 125hz to 1000hz. why is this important? because it cuts down the latency (aka “lag”) from 8ms to 1ms. while a 7ms dif­fer­ence may not seem like much, if you’re like any gamer that i’ve met, you will take even the tiniest optim­iz­a­tions because over time, small little tweaks like this do end up making a dif­fer­ence over the long hall. (how­ever, if you do have a 32-​bit oper­ating system and still want to optimize your mouse, keep reading. i’ll be cov­ering both 64 bit and 32 bit win­dows fla­vours in this post.)

tech­nical out­line and things for you to keep in mind:

mouse latency chart:

• 125 hz = 8ms
• 250 hz = 4ms
• 500 hz = 2ms
• 1000 hz = 1ms
• faq: no, you cannot raise your polling above 1000 hz. maybe in the future, but even 1000 hz is ques­tion­able in usefulness.

as you can see, between 500 hz and 1000 hz, there is only a 1ms drop in latency. there is NO WAY you can tell a dif­fer­ence. so if you can get 500 hz and not 1000 hz, then you should be happy. 1000 hz also has the down­side of being more cpu-​intensive (the cpu has to pro­cess more inform­a­tion from your mouse), so that is some­thing you have to con­sider, but because of the rel­ative speed and power of modern pro­cessors, the effect on the cpu will most likely be negligible.

NOTE: if you do finish this guide and notice that you cannot seem to receive a steady 1000 hz, and it fluc­tu­ates any­where between 500‑1000, it’s prob­ably a good idea to just set your mouse to 500 hz instead of the full 1000 hz.

how do i know my mouse can handle 1000 hz polling? quick answer: it’ll say so on the box. a lot of gaming mice will tell you their spe­cific­a­tions down to coating they use on the mouse feet. it’s a mar­keting gim­mick. 1000 hz polling provides no real-​world added benefit over 500 hz because you’re not a machine. your body cannot phys­ic­ally tell the dif­fer­ence in response between 500 hz and 1000 hz. the idea behind polling is centered around the concept of inform­a­tion sent and inform­a­tion received. most desktop usb mice, by default, are set to poll at 125 hz, how­ever, most (but not all) can handle much higher (500 hz). with that said, not all will be able to get up to 1000 hz. even if your mouse cannot handle 1000 hz, get­ting the polling rate up should be useful anyway to curb latency between you moving/​clicking your mouse and the response on screen.

and now for get­ting that mouse polling speed up:

WINDOWS 64-​BIT (VISTA/​7):

1. start by down­loading these two small files (also avail­able in our DOWNLOADS sec­tion):

High Defin­i­tion USB Fix (1.1 MiB, 5,890 hits)

— this pro­gram will be used to CHANGE your polling rate.

Direct Input Mouse Rate (30.7 KiB, 7,809 hits)

— this pro­gram will be used to CHECK your polling rate.

2. extract “HIDUSBF.ZIP” & “DIMR.RAR”. you can extract them both into the same folder. find “HIDUSBF.INF”. right click and choose “INSTALL”. you may get an unsigned driver warning. that’s normal. accept the warning.

3. open up “DSEO13B.EXE” check “Enable Test Mode”. once that’s done, a screen like this should appear:

4. reboot your com­puter. (book­mark this page first, of course :-D )

NOTE: once you reboot, your back­ground will change and your desktop will look a little dif­ferent — DON’T WORRY. this is the developer test mode that microsoft engin­eers use to debug the oper­ating system. it is harm­less and once we’re done, we’ll get you out of test mode and back to your reg­ular desktop.

5. once you’re back onto your desktop, go open “DSEO13B.EXE” again, and choose “SIGN A SYSTEM FILE”. in the box, type/​browse to “C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\HIDUSBF.SYS”. this is important: make sure that is where your HIDUSBF.sys is loc­ated oth­er­wise this won’t work. usu­ally, 99% of the time, that is where it is loc­ated so you SHOULD be okay. if everything goes well, this mes­sage will appear:

6. RESTART.

7. once you’re back on your desktop, go back to the folder and this time, open the file “SETUP.EXE”. this is where we actu­ally get to adjust your mouse polling. find your mouse, and at the BOTTOM LEFT, check the box that says “Filter on Device”. the list will look like this:

8. in the box beside Filter On Device are your polling rates. you’ll see a few listed. choose 1000hz (or 500hz) and close.

NOTE: con­trary to pop­ular belief, there really is not that much of a dif­fer­ence between the two. only higher-​end gaming mice actu­ally even sup­port 1000mhz anyway. you can also take your com­puter out of TEST MODE by opening up “DSEO13B.EXE” again and dis­abling it from there.

9. REBOOT.

10. open up “DIMR.EXE” now and you’ll see a small widget in the top corner of your screen. swirl your mouse around and you should be polling at a much higher speed!

NOTE: if this did not work, maybe you missed a step? none of these steps do irre­par­able harm to your com­puter, so you can retry this and try to get it to work. at the very least, you should have been able to bump your polling from 125hz to 500hz. not everyone will be able to get the full 1000hz, so don’t be dis­ap­pointed if you’re one of them.

FOR WINDOWS 32 BIT (XP/​VISTA) USERS:

things are much sim­pler for people run­ning a 32 bit oper­ating system because you do not need to enable TEST MODE.

1. first, start by down­loading these two small files (also avail­able in our DOWNLOADS sec­tion):

High Defin­i­tion USB Fix (1.1 MiB, 5,890 hits)

- this pro­gram will be used to CHANGE your polling rate.

Direct Input Mouse Rate (30.7 KiB, 7,809 hits)

- this pro­gram will be used to CHECK your polling rate.

2. next, extract “HIDUSBF.ZIP” & “DIMR.RAR”. you can extract them both into the same folder.

3. right click on “HIDUSBF.INF” and select “INSTALL”.

NOTE: If your mouse stops responding after installing — it hap­pens occa­sion­ally — just reboot and your mouse will be activ­ated again.

4. now, open up “SETUP.EXE”

5. select your mouse, and check “Filter On Device” and select your pre­ferred polling rate (either 500 or 1000).

7. RESTART.

8. open DIMR.EXE and check your polling.

FOR THE COMPLETE MOUSE OPTIMIZATION GUIDE:

this guide has been floating all over the internet for the last few years. there are still some useful tid­bits in there, so if you’re inter­ested in checking it out, go here:

http://​www​.over​clock​.net/​c​o​m​p​u​t​e​r​-​p​e​r​i​p​h​e​r​a​l​s​/​1​7​3​2​5​5​-​c​s​-​s​-​m​o​u​s​e​-​o​p​t​i​m​i​z​a​t​i​o​n​-​g​u​i​d​e​.​h​tml