Uninstalled mouse (driver) won't reininstall

OS: WIndows XP

Hi

I bought an optical mouse for my Acer laptop so I tried it and all worked well. I then unplugged it and plugeed in my old mouse. I then proceeded to go to system properties to uninstal the mouse driver thinking that windows wouod then reinstall the driver for the new optical mouse but no such thing happened. I put back the old mouse and that too did not work--even after doing it a few times with reboots.

I then proceeded to remove all usb things rebooted and naturally WIndows recognized the installed hardware so started instaaling the drivers BUT all mouses (mice???) would still not work.

I repeated the procedure this trime instead of rebooting I shut it down but still no go.

Here's the thing, when removing and uninstalling mouse, keyboard, USB stuff and then reinstalling them the mouse did work for a few seconds but then once the installation process finished it stopped.

In System-Device Manager/Hardware the mouse never shows up. If i remove it i can here a beep (the default sound when something is unplugged) and another beep when i plug it back in. Regardeless mouse never shows up in DEvice manager and ner works.

what must I do? All the mice I have always used Windows drivers and even "Add New Hardware does not have a listing for a mouse nor any brand name of all mjy mice (4 in all).

Help? Using Laptop mouse is not my thing.

OS: WIndows XP