I never thought this would be true, but it does appear that a mouse for Windows 2K, ME and before can be incompatible with WinXP and newer.
I have Logitech Trackman Marble+ mice installed and they look and feel similar to the newer Trackman Wheel mice. Both have a trackball for the thumb, are stationary, have two buttons plus a wheel/button. Yet the former has very funny side effects. The XP and up model has a smaller trackball so it doesn't move as much across the screen in one swipe of the thumb, otherwise there is no significant difference. I finally had to give up on the older model but couldn't live with an ordinary mouse so I ordered the current model in the hopes that just a software update would fix it, but no, so the old one is a museum piece even if this particular unit was only used for a day or two.
While mice are *mostly* universal, there are some that won't work w/ certain things. For example... our old IBM-branded USB trackballs will not work on an HP dx2200, and Systemax OEM USB mice have a 75% chance of working on the same HP dx2200's.