I have had this issue with a number of mice and a number of different computers now. Some older USB mice will not work when you plug them into Windows Vista. What happens is a dialog appears saying installing software and then fails saying unknown device.
The fix for this as I just found out this morning is quite simple:
- Click on start
- Right click on computer
- Select properties
- On the left side of the dialog that comes up select device manager
- Scroll down the list of devices to the known device
- Right click and select Update Driver Software
- Select chose from a list of drivers
- Select Human Interface Device
- Select HID compliant mouse
- Click okay and the mouse should now work
Simple. And Windows had the drivers to make it work all along! Sometimes Windows does some really simple things wrong and as a result is just so frustrating. It is a mouse it should just work!