Logitech G5 2007 Edition with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, 5th button not invoking Exposé

I'm using a Logitech G5 2007 Edition mouse with my Mac. I've had it since Tiger, and everything has worked fine. I use the 4th button (the back arrow button) to show all windows in Exposé and I use the 5th button (the forward arrow button) to show the desktop in Exposé.

I've not been using any third party software to configure the mouse, just the Exposé preferences in System Preferences. I won't use that rubbish Logitech Control Centre.

I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard and the 5th button doesn't invoke the show desktop exposé command any more. The 4th button and 3rd buttons work as intended.

I tried reassigning the 5th button to show Dashboard, and that worked! Why? I have no idea.

Basically, after some testing, any mouse button assigned to show desktop doesn't show the desktop. But assigning any other button to any other Exposé command works...

Any help would be great, thanks guys.

Solution 1:

So the solution I found - after a hell of a lot of googling and research - was that the preferences file was screwed.

If you have this issue (where a mouse button is assigned to a function, but that function doesn't work as expected) simply delete the symbolichotkeys.plist file from your preferences folder and logout and log back in. You can then reset your mouse button assignments and everything should work as normal - no rubbish Logitech or other 3rd party software needed.

The full path is:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist

Solution 2:

I am using the Logitech Control Center, but I also found that setting buttons to Spaces or Expose didn't work. Instead, I assigned the buttons to the function key which called those commands and it has been working find since.