Unable to locate any drivers for my USB devices  

I seem to be unable to connect devices via USB and have my Win7 Pro (x64) locate the correct driver for it.

A couple of weeks ago I connected a wireless mouse. I placed the USB receiver into my laptop, I saw the little animated icon in the system tray looking like it was installing something, but after about 20 seconds a bubble told me that driver installation had failed - a driver could not be located.

This morning I connected a headset (headphones & microphone) via USB and got the same result.

In both cases the devices show up under Other devices with a little exclamation mark.

Also, in both cases I could connect the same devices into another laptop (Win7 Ult. x64) and both the mouse and the headset work as expected, but on my laptop the drivers cannot be located.

In the case of the mouse, I found which driver the other laptop had installed for it, located the same on my laptop (it was installed) and manually assigned this driver to the device, but was then told that the device could not be started.

I've placed my system disk back in the drive and asked it to search the disk for drivers, but that doesn't turn up anything either.

Short of re-installing Windows (which I do not want to do), can anyone suggest what might be going wrong?

@Roderunner - Here's a screenshot of my Device Manager when I connect the wireless mouse: TechSmith | Screencast.com, online video sharing, 2011-01-30_1304

[The headset is being used by someone else at the moment.]

I know that the mouse is expected to use the standard HID-compliant mouse driver, but something in my system thinks that that's not the correct driver.

@Joules - I can't install the Vista version of the driver because both devices are looking for the standard Windows driver. For this reason the manufacturers of both devices don't offer drivers.

Also, I have a Dell XPS m1530, so I went to Dell's website and downloaded the only wireless mouse driver that they offer, although it was for Logitech I just thought I'd give it a go. Anyway, when I tried to install I was told that I already had a more up-to-date driver installed. So I don't have much faith in getting the driver from the Dell website.

Try updating the Chipset drivers.

I downloaded the latest BIOS, re-flashed, re-started, set BIOS to default settings, re-started again, inserted the wireless mouse USB dongle... same as before: shows up with an exclamation mark under Other devices.

I do now get a small icon in the system tray which, when clicked, displays this dialog: http://screencast.com/t/lgE0EQfv

I have a Dell XPS M1530 laptop running Win7 Pro, and on the following page I've looked through all the available drivers for Windows Vista 64-bit (even though I'm running Win7, but Vista is the latest option in the drop-down). Aside from the BIOS, let me know if there are any others that I should download and re-install.

Drivers & Downloads

That site looks handy, but in my case it's no help.

For one thing, it listed a company whose website offers no mouse drivers, or any mention of mouse drivers.

But also, when I plug the wireless mouse into my girlfriend's laptop Windows does locate a driver for it - Windows assigns it the standard HDI-compliant mouse driver.

I can't see that there's a way to point to a specific driver file, but I have navigated to the driver using the "Let me select from a list..." option. I chose "Mice and other pointing devices / Microsoft / HDI-complaint mouse". Here's what I then get: TechSmith | Screencast.com, online video sharing, 2011-01-30_1728

I've also pointed Windows to the parent folder for the driver it should be using (according to the other laptop) and asked it scan for the necessary driver. Windows doesn't select the driver - it says that a driver cannot be found (though I can see it in Explorer).

Is there a way to point a device to a specific driver file? The closest option is to point it to a folder to browse by itself, but like I explained, Windows doesn't locate the driver this way.

Try updating the drivers from here:
Swiftpoint Wireless Laptop-Notebook Portable Mouse

@theog - if you look around the site you won't see any drivers made available for download because the Swiftpoint mouse uses the standard HDI-compliant mouse driver that comes with the OS.

I've had several emails from their support, but they were unable to resolve the issue for me.

In the end I did a repair install and aside from my wallpaper being changed and needing to download around 100 updates, the only other apparent change is that the wireless mouse and the headset now work.

So the issue doesn't appear to be that I had the wrong drivers per se, but rather that there was something wrong with the way my OS interfaced with my hardware and it was unable to recognise the devices' driver abilities.

Thanks for all your suggestions.