Tech Tips with Tammy: Windows not recognizing your USB device/drive?

So this is going to be a totally different post compared to my usual beauty reviews and what not, but I felt the need to share this with anyone who might be feeling the same frustration I had this entire day regarding my laptop not recognizing my USB mouse cord when it had been for the last two years. I had unplugged my mouse to take my laptop to school and when I brought it back and plugged it in, my mouse just wouldn't move my cursor! My laptop recognized that the mouse was plugged in, but when I tried to move the mouse to control my cursor on my screen, nothing would happen. If you're reading this, I'm assuming you're having a similar or the same problem and I want to share how I managed to fix it because let me tell you, it was SUCH a relief after going through and trying countless methods that failed to fix the problem.

Since I'm sure not everyone has the exact same problem as me, I'm going to first outline and show a few screenshots of what it looked like when I tried to first figure out my mouses' problem.

The yellow sign with the exclamation point is what was next to my "OPTICAL MOUSE" icon (I took this screenshot after I fixed my mouse)

To make sure that my USB ports were actually working, I tried out multiple different USB devices other than my mouse which worked so I knew it wasn't my actual USB port. Then I tried using a different mouse and that still didn't work, so I went to my Control Panel and noticed a yellow warning/trouble sign next to my mouse icon (so yes my computer was recognizing that my mouse was plugged in which eliminated that as a potential problem--if that's your case, sorry my solution won't work for you!).

Upon right clicking on my mouse icon, I was given these options (yes this is for a printer but it was the same).

I clicked Troubleshoot and went through the series of steps that it prompted me to determine the problem. What my computer gave me was "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the device driver is still in memory. (Code 38)". Being the total NOT tech-geek person that I am, I had no idea what that meant so of course, Google came to the rescue.

Searching up that exact problem gave me a number of forums with people having similar problems to myself but none of the given solutions seemed to work for me. I checked if my driver was out of date and that wasn't the problem because it was updated. Finally, I stumbled upon some forum (which I can't seem to find anymore and it's really frustrating me because it would be nice to show you guys that I'm not just making this up or something haha) where someone offered a link to the Microsoft support page that I'll link here.

The link will direct you to a page that looks like this.

If you read the page, it gives you a list of what the program does and you just click "run now". (I'm not sure if it's just me but the "run now" box looks a bit sketchy like one of those ads that you see and know to never click.. BUT I PROMISE YOU THIS ISN'T LIKE THAT haha!). I mean this is coming from the actual Microsoft support page so I'm pretty sure it's trustworthy. Anyways, I just followed the instructions on the program and it basically did everything for me and I think what it did was uninstall the driver and reinstall it and then I just had to restart my computer and.. *drumroll please* my mouse works!!! Wheeee, So yea it's pretty simple but I really just wanted to share that page/the program because I think it can fix a lot of problems you might be having with your drivers and devices and what not so hopefully, if you do have a problem and try this out, it works for you! Plus none of the forums I saw except that one that I can't find any more (Q.Q) linked me to this page so I'm not sure how many people know about it.

Let me know in the comments if this helps you out! :)