Sound Problems and Gaming Mouse Advice

[Wing Commander MAD]

First off the simple question:

Can anyone recommend a good gaming mouse? My current mouse is about 4.5 years old and the buttons seem not responding to every click. My guess is the mechanical portion of the mouse has been worn out and its time for a new one. Primary use will be gaming, though I don't really want to spend alot. I was considering a Logitek G5 on Amazon for about $50, though if someone has a better/cheaper alternative I'd be willing to listen. My only real requirements are that its optical, has at least 2 buttons and scroll wheel, and that its not wireless, and of course is responsive and good for gaming.

Now the hard one:

I am running Vista 32-bit, and have a Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card. Vista keeps losing the drivers for it. It comes up as Multimedia Audio Device in the device manager under other devices. It was working fine earlier today. When I have Vista try to install drivers for it I get this message: "Your sound card isn't working properly because a compatible driver isn't available for this version of Windows.The model name of your sound card is SB X-Fi.", and directs me to Creatives site. I have tried downloading the device drivers from creatives support website and installing them seems to do nothing. Creative's Audio Control Panel software does not recognize that a device is present either. I also tried installing the "Creative Audio Processor (WDM)" from where it lets you pick the device and manufacturer in the device manager driver update section and a get an error saying the device can't be started with I believe a code 10. I have tried searching online for a solution and haven't really found one. Yes the device is compatible with Vista. This happend one other time after the restart from installing IE 8, and was fixed by usinga a restore point. This time I simply quit a game (sound worked fine) shut the computer down, ate, and went to the movies. When I returned I had the above scenario. I really would like to avoid having to use the system restore if possible (it took several attempt to find a restore point that worked the first time), as it takes a long time and I don't see how shutting down could have changed anything with windows witj regards drivers and device recognition. Any help or advice would be appreciated, and telling me to not use Windows and to use some flavor of Linux instead is not acceptable advice.

I could go through the onboard on my new motherboard (Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P) if I can't get this resolved, though I don't think the sound quality is quite as good. It really wouldn't be a financial loss as the sound card is from my last system, so I got my money's worth. I am unsure if this is a issue with Vista or with Creative. I know Creative had some kind of driver fiasco with Vista awhile back, but I thought that got straitened out by now.

[JointStrikeFighter]

G5 or the cheaper cousin; the MX518 are a good choice.

[Memnon]

Basically, Creative drivers have never been very good, and they actually try to force customers to upgrade. For example, one guy was enabling Creative-disabled features on PCI sound cards a while back, and Creative basically told him to piss off because it was their right to screw with the drivers. (This was on Vista, but they also had broken apps on XP) They do this after OS changes and such to sell hardware.

That why I never buy Creative except for speakers and other no-software things.

[weemadando]

Logitech MX400

It's not strictly a "gaming" mouse, but I have one and love the ergonomics and "clickiness" of it.