MS Sidewinder 3D Pro + w2k

[grannoid 0]

Anyone got any ideas how I can make this joystick work in windows2000? My joystick port is on a vortex2 soundcard which seems to be working fine, but the OS refuses to recognise the joystick. Strikes me as odd (or should that be ironic?) that MS don't support their own hardware in their new flagship OS.

 

/grannoid

[kasnitch 0]

The problem is not with the joystick. I have the same joystick and the sidewinder game pad and they work fine.

 

What might be your problem is the game port itself. Check your device manager and make sure you are showing "Aureal vortex game port" under "sound video and game controllers". If it is there, check its properties to make sure windows reports the device is functioning properly. If windows does not see the game port, go to the add hardware wizard and manually add the standard microsoft game port. Then go to control panel/game controllers/advanced and change the port the joystick is supposed to use.

 

I have an aureal driver a friend found for me when I initially installed windows and couldn't get any sound from my card. After installing this driver, everything worked great and the gameport was properly assigned.

I haven't had any problems with sound in any game, and I've found that the 3d environment is vastly superior to what I had with win98.

These drivers are basically native codecs with no fancy aureal logo's etc, but sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

 

If you want to try these drivers out, let me know and I'll email them to you.

[Summoner 0]

I installed the new win2k drivers aureal realeased

but note there is a special procedure to install them, in the beginning the gaeport would not work, then i found the driver in a3dfan's page, and i read there on what to install

it works

 

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If it doesn't work, PLUG IT IN!

[grannoid 0]

OK cheers guys, I had another look yesterday and reinstalled the A3D drivers after fully clearing them out. The joystick now shows up in the control panel but only sometimes works - sometimes it shows up as status "unknown" or "disconnected", sometimes it's OK and works fine.

 

I'll try the drivers from a3dfan but I'm starting to suspect a possible problem with the port or the joystick cable.

 

Thanks for the suggestions

 

/Grannoid

[kasnitch 0]

Grannoid I would be willing to bet its not your joystick or gameport thats messed up. I bought my 3Dpro when microsoft first released them years ago and it still works perfect. Best joystick they've ever made.

 

Anyways. Win2K seems to do that once in a while. Its happened several times to me and the only way around that is: 1) Unplug the stick and plug it back in. It might take a couple tries. 2) Cold boot the computer and check your joystick properties.

 

Once you get the joystick showing as ok steady, it "should" work fine until you reboot again. Take it to a friend who is running win98 and it will probably report its fine.

 

There is also another thread on the site here that postulates it was the Nvidia 3.78 drivers that were causing this problem and it could be resolved by upgrading to 3.81. I was using 3.78 and I upgraded to 3.81 recently and to be honest my joystick is always detected ok now and I've been rebooting the crap out of my computer trying to get my frigging supra usb modem to work.

 

Hope this helps

[grannoid 0]

Spot on kasnitch - if the control panel says it ain't there and I then unplug it and plug it back it it appears fine 9 out of 10 times!

 

Thanks m8, I can go fly this helicopter now

 

/grannoid

[Syncope 0]

Check here ( http://www.microsoft.com/products/hardware/sidewinder/downloads/default.htm , bottom of the page) for a software patch that affects some 3D Pros.