My mouse is very moody. I changed it a couple of times thinking it might be my mouse but it still acts the same. My latest one is a wheelmouse optical. It does not move to the direction I wanted it to go and responds very slow. It works fine for a short while but later it gets stuck again. I tried to clean or reconfigure it but to no avail. It gets very frustrating when you play games. Please help.

Could be two problems with the mouse. If it is USB connected and you are using an older computer, or an older PC operating system you need to download the newest driver from the web page of the mouse name.
Another suggestion is either a dirty mouse pad, or a lemon mouse, or a dirty mouse (can clean by popping out surrounding outer plastic, be careful, and cleaning the ball and the inside with rubbing alcohol.
Hope that helps.

It could be a hardware problem, or it could be a problem with windows, or more specifically, the driver windows is using for the mouse.

Try to isolate windows/windows' drivers as the problem:

Grab a knoppix CD (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html), boot from it and see if your mouse works. Knoppix is a bootable Linux CD that is an entire operating system that runs completely from the CD, without messing with your hard drive. If the mouse works properly in Knoppix, then your problem is most likely with your windows driver.
If you're stuck with dial-up like me, and you don't want to download the 700MB knoppix ISO, you can try something like the linuxcare bootable toolbox(http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/lbt/). I think it has mouse support, but it's not as easy to use. It's only a 50MB download, though.

Hope this helps...
~psi42