Having Problems with Novation ReMOTE

So, being primarily a guitarist/bassist, I thought I would venture into the world of softsynths. I decided I would start with a Novation ReMOTE 25LE, to be used with Reason 2.5 and Live 5 on my IBM ThinkPad.

Well, long story short, the keyboard arrived today, I plugged it into my USB port and powered up, the class compliant installation ran and Windows XP (SP2) reported that it was "installed and ready to use"...and then both Reason and Live, as well as a free MIDI program I downloaded called MIDI-OX, decided to not recognize it as a MIDI input! Reason displayed "No MIDI Input" in the drop-down menu in Preferences > MIDI, Live didn't pick up the ReMOTE on its device scan, and MIDI-OX likewise reported no MIDI input. I rebooted multiple times, disconnected my mouse from the other USB port, switched the ReMOTE to the other USB port, and so on and so forth, but nothing. It shows up in Windows Device Manager, but as far as the programs I actually wanted to use went, it was like it didn't exist.

Funny thing was, I connected the ReMOTE to my friend's ThinkPad which has the same software I do, Windows auto-detected and installed, he opened up Reason...and the ReMOTE started working immediately without any hitches. What gives?

The only difference between his and my operating systems, as far as I can tell, is that my Windows XP is in Traditional Chinese and his is in English. I wouldn't think this has anything to do with MIDI, and I really hope it doesn't because then I would have to install another OS which would wreck the IBM restoration things... But could this possibly be where the problem lies?

I emailed Novation Answerbase about this already, but as it is the weekend now I doubt they will get back to me within a few days, so I thought I would post here as well.

I'd really appreciate any help suggestions. Thanks everyone:wave: