Vista - MS Intellipoint stopped working but ctrl panel says working proper

Using Vista on Gateway Model MT3423. Mouse abruptly stopped working after
months of successful use. Once before this was solved simply by plugging the
receiver?adapter whatever it is into the other USB port. Not this time.

Everything in the control panel says the device is working properly, and
that the driver is the most updated one. It says that the wireless battery
is good and signal quality is high. I recently put in a new battery.

I uninstalled the driver and restarted, but no new hardware was found. So I
tried installing something having to do with infrared devices, then realized
I had the installation CD for the mouse so used that. So then I undid the
infrared thing and now there's no infrared signal coming from the mouse.

Interestingly, in mouse properties, under the tab "settings" it is not
listed. but the other tabs say it's fine. Also, the CD says it's for
Intellipoint 6.1, but the picture matches "wireless notebook optical mouse
4000."

The only recent change is that I set up a "standard" user account for myself
because that's what my computer recommended, even if I'm the only one using
the computer. It's a pain for me because now my Firefox bookmarks are out of
sync.

Help?
thanks!

Susan C.