AA1 error detecting usb optical mouse

I'm reposting this here in the hopes that I will get some help with this issue. I've searched this forum for an answer (spent 3 hours reading the posts) and haven't been able to find any information on this problem. If anyone knows how to solve this I would appreciate it greatly. Here's my original post from the beginners thread:

I have had my AA1 for a couple months and I really like it, but I would rather use a mouse instead of the touchpad. I picked up a little usb optical mouse and the AA1 won't install the driver for the mouse. I get an error: "An error occurred during installation of the device. The system cannot find the specified file". I have tried uninstalling the device (mouse) in the device manager and rebooting (same error), I've tried manually installing the driver and get the same error. The mouse works on my big laptop and my desktop computer. I've tried all three usb ports and different usb devices in the ports and they all work. Its just won't load the driver for the mouse. Anyone else have this issue?? Oh yeah - its an xp machine...

 

Sounds to me like a Windows XP issue. Not the laptop itself, so there's a good place to start. Here's a few things to try:

1. In My Computer, right-click on your hard drive, goto Properties, select the Tools tab, and schedule a complete hard drive check. Make sure all the options are set and reboot. Let the thorough hard drive scan run through to make sure there's no corruption in the file system.
2. (optional, you will probably need a Windows XP disk to match your system) Start -> Run -> type CMD and press enter. In the black box (command prompt) that pops up, type the following without the " marks: "SFC /SCANNOW". Allow this thorough scan to run through to ensure there's no corruption to the main Windows Files.
3. Ensure all your drivers are up to date (check the Acer support website for your model, agains the driver versions which can be found by using device manager.
4. Ensure Windows itself is completely up to date. Also ensure you're running the latest service pack (SP3)
5. In the device manager, try uninstalling all USB devices INCLUDING the host controllers, reboot the system and allow them to reinstall.

Let me know if this helps.