Mice with scroll wheels came years after WFW 3.11 release, so they can't be supported out-of-the-box.
I don't know about any third-party software for that, but I've never been looking...

Yeah this might be a dead-end until win 3.1 source leaks like XP and some fans decide to add this functionality. What I found is:

Turns out I was wrong, The Windows 3.1 SDK does in fact define WM_MBUTTONDOWN and WM_MBUTTONUP. No built-in applications use it, and very few other applications do either. 🙁

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.ms-window … x/c/sHbimhEvkgg

So even if I could get it work it would not work with most of the apps including the main windows, maybe there is a chance that the last Netscape or Opera for Win 3.X implemented it.

I saw some ppl recommends that A4tech mouse because it has driver, I also just running it in Vmware which can complicate the situation a bit further.

Grzyb wrote on 2020-12-27, 15:06:

Mice with scroll wheels came years after WFW 3.11 release, so they can't be supported out-of-the-box.
I don't know about any third-party software for that, but I've never been looking...

Back in the mid-90s when I used Windows 3.1 on my 286 PC I always wondered.. :
"What is that third mouse button for?"

I mean, at the time, I barely used the button on the right, even.
On my father's PC running Win95, sure.. It was used for this strange "new" context menu that could be summoned by right clicking on that desktop..

But a scroll wheel, an all-optical mouse (no ball), PS/2 (Mini-DIN) connectors.. My goodness, that was unusual to me.
I mean, it was not totally unheard of. But it was as rare as one of these trackball mice.
Maybe even more so, not sure.

By the time Win98 came out, *I think* mice with scroll wheels were all over the place, though.
The Microsoft IntelliMouse or how it was called seemed quite popular for a while.

Gopher666 wrote on 2020-12-27, 18:49:

Turns out I was wrong, The Windows 3.1 SDK does in fact define WM_MBUTTONDOWN and WM_MBUTTONUP. No built-in applications use it, and very few other applications do either. 🙁

WM_LBUTTONDOWN, WM_MBUTTONDOWN, WM_RBUTTONDOWN, etc., are about mouse BUTTONS, not about scroll wheels.
And yes, there's at least one built-in thing that uses the middle mouse button - the Minesweeper game.
Yes, Microsoft was selling 2-button mice, while their own software was inconvenient to use without a 3-button one 😁

Anyway, any Windows software that uses the standard API for scrolling documents should work with a scroll wheel, provided that a proper mouse driver is installed.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-27, 19:22:

Back in the mid-90s when I used Windows 3.1 on my 286 PC I always wondered.. :
"What is that third mouse button for?"
I mean, at the time, I barely used the button on the right, even.

Back then I used Unix with X11, and got accustomed to using all three buttons - SELECT, ADJUST, MENU.
I still can't be happy without a 3-button mouse, while I don't care about scroll wheels.

Gopher666 wrote on 2020-12-27, 18:49:

Yeah this might be a dead-end until win 3.1 source leaks like XP and some fans decide to add this functionality. What I found is […]
Show full quote

Yeah this might be a dead-end until win 3.1 source leaks like XP and some fans decide to add this functionality. What I found is:

Turns out I was wrong, The Windows 3.1 SDK does in fact define WM_MBUTTONDOWN and WM_MBUTTONUP. No built-in applications use it, and very few other applications do either. 🙁

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.ms-window … x/c/sHbimhEvkgg

So even if I could get it work it would not work with most of the apps including the main windows, maybe there is a chance that the last Netscape or Opera for Win 3.X implemented it.

I saw some ppl recommends that A4tech mouse because it has driver, I also just running it in Vmware which can complicate the situation a bit further.

As Grzyb has written WM_MBUTTONDOWN and WM_MBUTTONUP are not mouse wheel/scroll messages. 3rd/middle button was present earlier than wheel and even DOS drivers could handle it.

WM_MOUSEWHEEL is the relevant message you are looking for but it was missing from Win3x and first appeared in Win9x.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win3 … v/wm-mousewheel

Software like CAD made use of the third button as well... The DFI DMS-200H three button serial mouse I have on my Redstone Computers 10Mhz XT Turbo has a switch on the side to go from 3 button to 2 button mode. GeoWorks Pro 1.2 has drivers for both Microsoft Mode and Mouse Systems mode for it.