Sidewinder Precision Pro for XP??

[Veronius]

I just installed Flight Sim 2004 on my Windows XP system
and my Sidewinder Precision Pro is not working properly
with it - the throttle goes up but won't come down, the
rudder's tilted over and I can't get it centred etc. -
where can I get the latest driver for this thing that
will work on XP? All I can find on the MS site is a
driver for Windows 95 and 98 - no mention of XP at all.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Connect joystick to PC and go to the Control Panel.

Click on Game Controllers. Use the AutoDetect features... the drivers are
already built into XP.

Cari
www.coribright.com

 

[Veronius]

Thanks - but the joystick was already connected, and I
can't find any "autodetect" features under game
controllers in the control panel.

 

[Joshua Smith [MSFT]]

1. In Gaming Options Click the "Add..." button.
2. From the list choose "Microsoft SideWinder (Auto Detect)"

You may also have to calibrate your device.

1. Highlight your device in the list and click the "Properties" button.
2. Click Settings tab
3. Click the "Calibrate" button.

 

[veronius]

Thanks for the reply. I can't find "Gaming Options"
anywhere - where does that appear?

Also, I calibrated and recalibrated the thing a few times
already but it had no effect. I couldn't even find a way
to assign the throttle to the wheel on the joystick. All
that appeared under assignments were keyboard-oriented
commands along the lines of "throttle slightly up"
or "throttle to full" - nothing simply for "throttle"
which is what I would have wanted to assign to the wheel.

ver

 

[veronius]

One thing - it does tell me the device resides on the
Creative Game port and that I should reassign it to
another port. Which one, I wonder - and how do I do it?

 

[Joshua Smith [MSFT]]

"Gaming Options" is the Control Panel applet that you run to configure your
game devices. To get there:

1. Connect the device to the gameport
2. Start -> Run -> Control Panel
3. Switch to "Classic View".
4. Run the Gaming Options control

Some questions for you though. Did you install any joystick helper apps?
Below you refer to assigned commands of "throttle slightly up" ect. What are
the exact steps you take to get this? Also, in your other post you refer to
an error message about your ports. Do you have more than one gameport on
this machine? Such as an active one on your motherboard and one on your
Creative card? If so you should try to disable the one on the motherboard.
In general gameports do not like to share resources and things can get messy
if there are two.

 

[veronius]

Joshua:

First off, many thanks for your patience. I really do
appreciate it. This must be as frustrating for you as it
is for me!

To business:

There is no "Gaming Options" panel in Control Panel, in
either Classic or Category view. There is a "Game
Controllers" panel in Classic, which indicates the
Sidewinder is installed, but has very limited
functionality - for example, no "autodetect" capability
that I can find under troubleshoot, advanced, properties
etc.

No joystick helper apps installed that I'm aware of. Just
the newest drivers I could find - and that was a while
ago.

The incremental throttle controls that I referred to as
keyboard-oriented appeared under assignments when I
calibrated the joystick in an attempt to get the machine
to recognize the device. I've accessed the
calibrate/assignment panel through both the control panel
and Flight Simulator.

There is only one port - Which leaves me a bit mystified
as to why the machine would tell me to assign the
joystick to another one.

Maybe I should buy a new joystick?

 

[Joshua Smith [MSFT]]

Hi Veronius,

Sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday. Things got a little busy here. I
don't mind at all helping, I am glad to.

I didn't mean to misdirect you in calling it Gaming Options. The name
changes form time to time and I just had the wrong one in my head at the
time =). The "autodetect" should be listed in the dialog box after you hit
the "Add..." button.

I am a little puzzled by your indication of having installed newer drivers.
The only driver package Microsoft made for the gameport devices was
Sidewinder 3.02, but if you tried installing those on your system it should
have failed. The drivers included in the 3.02 package were updated with some
fixes and put into XP as the "Microsoft SideWinder (Auto-Detect)" entry in
the list after clicking "Add...". Does that sound right?

The incremental throttle controls that I referred to as
keyboard-oriented appeared under assignments when I
calibrated the joystick in an attempt to get the machine
to recognize the device.

Is this in the game itself? If so I was thinking you saw this in "Game
Controllers". I guess the question I should have asked in the beginning is,
does the device work in other games? If you open Device Manager [1] and look
in the "Sound, video and game controllers" section is there more than one
device with gameport in its name listed?

As far as getting a new joystick goes I will just say that it is my personal
opinion you should. Not because I think this device won't work or because I
think it is defective, but because a USB device is much easier to use and is
much more reliable in transmitting data. The days of gameports are numbered.
If you want to we can carry this through e-mail and send screen shots.
Sometimes it is easier to see what's going on than describe it. Also, if you
wanted you could send me a dxdiag report [2] of your system that I could
look through to see if it indicated what was wrong.



[1] Device Manager
1. Right Click the My Computer icon.
2. Choose Properties from the dialog.
3. In the "System Properties" window select the "Hardware" tab.
4. In the middle section labeled "Device Manager" click the "Device Manager"
button.

[2] dxdiag
1. Click Start -> Run.
2. Type dxdiag in the Run dialog box, hit Enter.
3. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool should open.
4. Click the "Save All Information..." button.
5. Save the output and either send to me (remove online from address) or
post it back here.