I have been struggling with this on and off for nearly a year after purchase of new laptop. (I have been using my old PC all this time.)
Express Scribe would only work with manual controls but would not recognize the footpedal. Last weekend I was determined to find the problem. Seems there was something missing in my Footpedal Control Setup Wizard. I followed instructions and loaded what it suggested and I STILL could not get it to work. After about 4 hours I gave up (again).
Now comes the good part. I was using the "new" laptop for something else and noticed under "My Documents" an icon I had never seen before labeled "Express Scribe". Turns out to be whatever it was I loaded the weekend before. I moved the icon to my desktop, double clicked it and Ta-da
it loaded!!! I then went back into Express Scribe, Settings, Control, and finally Footpedal Control Setup Wizard , followed instructions for setting up the footpedal and IT ACTUALLY WORKS !! 

So if anyone is having a similar problem, try looking in "My documents" for the download.