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!