My mouse won't go on its treadmill (no, really, Sandstrom mouse issues)

HellSquirrel

So, I have a longlife Sandstrom SMWLHYP15 mouse, which has to be the most ridiculous name out there. It was working just fine until yesterday and now it appears to be dead. It's only a few months old.

Hardware:
The lights are on, the lazer is blue (although it is flickering a lot and I'm not certain that that's normal), the USB port is binging when it's plugged in.

I've tried replacing the batteries, although to be fair, I didn't have any brand new batteries, but I used working batteries from a clock. I've plugged in an old mouse which is crap, but it is working, so it's not the USB port.

Everything clicks satisfactorily, so it's not that there's a button dead or something.

There's no sign of damage to the laser area, and I very gently cleaned it with a q-tip so it's not lodged crud or anything. Actually, the mouse in general is very clean.

Software
It's a plug-and-play, so there's no specific device driver to install (and I can't seem to find any for Sandstrom in general anyway). Device Manager shows a HID-Compliant Mouse when I plug it in (which vanishes when plugged out). I've tried refreshing it for hardware changes, no dice. Now, my computer did install updates yesterday, so maybe that's had something to do with it.

There are no hard-reset buttons on either the mouse itself or the little USB drive that connects it to the computer.

I am very loathe to turn off the mousepad, as that could result in having no method to control the laptop! Besides, it's always worked fine with the mousepad on. Actually, it's currently set to not allow the mousepad to work if there's a mouse plugged in, which should reset if I plug it out.

Hm, I just plugged out the working mouse there and the mousepad started working again even though the dead one was still in. So that seems to narrow it down a bit, although I am not quite sure to what.

Any ideas?

Yawns

Tbh clocks need feck all power from a battery to run. I find batteries that can't power even a remote control will power a clock for a few weeks at least. Try decent batteries in it as you have already ruled out the USB port.

HellSquirrel

Fair enough, you probably have a good point on that. It may be just that all the batteries I've tried have been too low power (I did quite a bit of battery-cannibalising from other devices, but they had all been in prior use) to get it going.

A trundle to the shop is in order then. Thanks!

HellSquirrel

New batteries installed and nothing doing, sadly. Control panel is registering that there is a Wireless Mouse in there, but the cursor isn't reacting to it.Troubleshooting indicates that it's looking into if the USB port is incompatible (it isn't), and then it pretty much shrugs and gives up.

M.T.D

If you can, restore your system to before the updates and see if mouse comes back.

I had a possibly similar problem previously after updates. USB ports still made a noise when anything was plugged in or out but did not work.
As I had no restore points I ended up having to delete the drivers and the entries in the registry, and then reinstalling. conflict was the USB3 upgrade.