New computer + Windows 11, suddenly strange throttle behavior on my Old Reliable X45

AngryRedHerring

A
My old PC had a motherboard meltdown, but I was at least able to save my old C drive and port my settings over. Got Elite working and VR working as well, and with a little tweaking got my X45 functioning again-- ...except for one really weird thing.

When I move my throttle handle (the U-axis), the setting indicator line-- the horizontal line with the diamond-- moves properly. But the thrust responds in reverse, and not very cleanly either. If I try to simply work backwards, the actual result in thrust is intermittent, and difficult to predict. Wonky is a pretty good word for it.

If I set the throttle to operate in reverse, then once again the indicator line responds as it should, but the thrust is the reverse of that. Then if I try to set the axis again in control settings it doesn't recognize the U-axis right away. It's kind of Hit or Miss as to whether I can get it to recognize it at all.

Joystick calibration works fine, The dead zone settings in the control panel are set, and respond properly.

For the time being I have set the throttle to one of the rotary switches, which works just fine (as far as I can tell, everything works fine except the thrust detection). But I cannot figure out why the indicator line responds properly while the game misreads what the indicator line is saying, or why one element of the game responds properly to the axis, while another does not (or why the indicator line responds while the game is unable to see the axis in settings).

I may have a workaround using the profile software, but that's going to take some time, and it still doesn't put my mind at ease as to why this one part suddenly isn't working. I'm sure it has something to do with the switch from Windows 10 to 11, but if the whole throttle was completely screwy I'd be more apt to believe it's simply that. But this thing where the indicator line responds correctly while the actual thrust is backwards and wonky has got me very confused.
 

AngryRedHerring

A
HERE'S WHAT FINALLY WORKED.

At least, I think that this is what fixed it.

I found this post talking about improper base calibration values in the registry for Saitek products, because the Saitek uninstall process was not properly wiping them. Basically, I unplugged the controller, wiped the stored calibration values from the registry, and plugged it back in. Voila, U-axis was recognized by Elite right away, and the throttle started responding properly.

The information in that post is outdated, only as current as Windows 8, but with some careful searching I managed to find the Windows 11 location of these values:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\MediaProperties\PrivateProperties\DirectInput\VID_0x06A3&PID_0x053C

...That final folder being the IDs of the X45, which I found in this reddit post. That's the folder I deleted.

I'm pretty sure that what happened, because this is a brand new system, is that when I first tried to reinstall these drivers the process went wonky and entered incorrect values. For example, when I first installed the profile editor, it would not open; it crashed every time. But upon uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers and software, the screwed-up base calibration values were never changed, and were sitting there waiting to bork any future reinstalls.

Thanks for the head scratching, because it did help me figure out where the problem was not, and that's a big part of detective work.

Now. When last I left my old melted computer I had just landed on a planet with 7 biological signals, so...
 

Fixitman

F
IIRC, that was a problem I ran into with my X45 under XP. Microsoft must be providing the same basic drivers. Saitek never really had very reliable drivers for the X45 and X36. That's why I used custom drivers back then, but that doesn't work on Win 7 and newer.

(My X36, both X45's, and both P8000's are just worn out showpieces now)
 

AngryRedHerring

A
Fixitman said:
IIRC, that was a problem I ran into with my X45 under XP. Microsoft must be providing the same basic drivers. Saitek never really had very reliable drivers for the X45 and X36. That's why I used custom drivers back then, but that doesn't work on Win 7 and newer.

(My X36, both X45's, and both P8000's are just worn out showpieces now)
Click to expand...
I'm also thinking that part of the problem here is that the old install program puts the registry entries where they do not go in current versions of Windows. After I deleted the registry entry folder and reconfigured the stick, that particular folder did not reappear.
 

Fixitman

F
AngryRedHerring said:
I'm also thinking that part of the problem here is that the old install program puts the registry entries where they do not go in current versions of Windows. After I deleted the registry entry folder and reconfigured the stick, that particular folder did not reappear.
Click to expand...
If you used an installer for a different OS, you're lucky it works at all :)
 
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