Optical mouse occasionally turns off

[Moondoggie]

I have a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical plugged into a Win2K machine through USB. Occasionally, out of the blue, it will stop working. The mouse doesn't move the cursor and the red light within the mouse goes out. The interesting part is, the vast majority of times the mouse will turn back on if I ALT-TAB through my open programs for a bit. If it doesn't, I can just unplug the mouse and plug it back in. It doesn't seem to happen in a particular program with any consistency - it tends to be spread out amongst programs. Sometimes Firefox, sometimes Outlook, sometimes VB.NET. Any ideas, anyone?