My Mouse Won't Detect And Install!

Right, heres my problem.
None of my mice will install themselves, and I can't install them manually due to having no CDs for them, and I can't seem to do it through add hardware.
Is there anything I can do to make my mice detect?
And by the way, I just spent the last 20 minutes TABBING my way here. Fun, isn't it?

yep, very fun.

i'm gonna assume you are working with USB mice. if that's the case, have you tried another USB slot? failing that, do your other USB devices work?

is it a new pc? has the mouse worked before then died? or did you buy a new mouse?

well xp should come packaged with a standard mouse driver that should work with pretty much any mouse plugged in right out of the box without any additional software/drivers. if it's a software problem, theres probably something wrong going on with xp. but i have doubts in it being an installation problem, rather the mouse not being detected at all.

hardware, it sounds like it could be the usb port. as moriz said, try the usb port with other devices that you know for a fact work.

Turns out my USB ports are dead for some reason, I've tried installing USB 1.1 and 2.0.. Nothing works.
So I'm going to quick format my HDD, and re-install windows.
If that doesn't work, looks like I'm forking out for a new Mobo. </3