I received a Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500, which comprises 2 pieces of hardware:

• USB Transceiver
• The Mouse

In the typical case, you plug the transceiver into a USB port, Windows attempts to load the drivers, it works, and all is well.

The Problem

In my case, Windows could not locate the drivers and consequently the mouse would not work.

It did not work correctly for me because Windows was looking in the wrong place for the drivers. Why is this? Perhaps a month ago, I had set up my machine for Android development, and to do so I needed to install some drivers for the Droid 2 that were bundled with Flash Builder Burrito. I followed the usual Windows procedure for pointing to that driver location.  To wit:

You get to this screen by manually choosing the driver location. Remember that.

The Solution

Lo these weeks later, when plugging in the transceiver, Windows was still looking in that previous driver location, even though I told Windows to “search automatically” for the driver software for the transceiver. I had mistakenly thought that “search automatically” meant “Dear Windows, you know where your drivers are, so please look there”. Nope. In this case, it meant “Search in the folder that is currently set as the Driver location in the ‘Browse driver software on your computer’ Dialog. WTF?

This feels like a bug to me.

At any rate, the solution for getting Windows to correctly find the transceiver drivers was to select “Browse my computer for software” and then use “C:\windows\winsxs” as the driver location.

In Pictures

Locate your transceiver in Device Manager (Right click “Computer”, select “properties”, then “Device Manager”. Or type “Device Manager” in the “Search Programs and Files” box)

Select “Properties”

Click “Update Driver”

Click “Browse my computer for driver software”

Type “C:\Windows\winsxs”. Click through the rest of the screens till it completes