A Bit OT: Need Help with Controller Conflict

[newbert]

Although I'm mostly into racing sims, I'm currently looking for a good golf game on PC. I've tried both PGA Tour 2K21 and The Golf Club 2019, and both have the same controller conflict problems. That is, I lose the mouse cursor while in the menus.

For my twelve or so racing simulators and Flight Simulator 2020, my steering wheel with pedals, a joystick, a keyboard and mouse all remain connected at the same time and there's been no problem. So I'm very reluctant to reconfigure/disconnect any controller just to play golf.

I'd like to get either of these golf games to work using the keyboard and mouse without disconnecting/reconnecting other controllers. So, is there any way to temporarily disable, then re-enable the wheel, peds and joystick (temporarily leaving the mouse and keyboard as the only active controllers ) from within Windows 10?

Hopefully I'm not the only person who leaves multiple controllers connected at the same time! So I hope that there is some solution to this.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Durge Driven]

So you leave wheel turned on when not using it ?
I have not had a wheel since FFB when powered down appears in devices ?

I run a good hub and keep controllers and gaming headphones disconnected when not using
With hub in good place takes 10-15 seconds to plug them in ( 4 devices )

Problems arise if you don't put the devices back in the same USB slots in your tower
However using a hub all devices will use that ..so unless you unplug Hub and plug back in different USB slots you won't get a single " windows connected blah blah ...your device is ready"

I run 2 PC but never at the same time so switching every USB device I use between towers takes 5 seconds ie: 1 USB plug ....just make sure you don't stick it back in a different slot ....yeah

I keep saying all hubs are not equal cheap ones have fixed power and perform bad
and latency with external HDDs and such

Good one like this won't ( I have Orico 15 port is brilliant ) so you can hot plug devices with confidence cheap hub you plug in backwards by mistake and arc it not good

So my answer plug everything into a good hub and put where you can pull out all plugs and back in quickly

ORICO 16 Port USB3.0 Multi-Port USB Hub w/ Individual Switches

Individual switches make this hub more convenient to control and safer to use.

www.ple.com.au

 

[newbert]

Thanks for your thoughts on this but I really don't want to add a further hardware expense (a hub) just to get one game to work.

Turning the wheel off may help, but I don't see any on/off switch on my TS PC-Racer. And unplugging cables from the back of the PC tower (which is on the floor) is difficult for me due to mobility limitations.

 

[Turk]

I've had this issue as well. The only thing to do is turn off the controller your not using.

Maybe you could use a USB extension cord, plug your device into that. If the connection is easily accessible you can just disconnect it when you need too.

 

[newbert]

Thanks, Turk. I tried unplugging the joystick (which is only used for MSFS2020), but that made no difference. Also tried unplugging my VR head set. Same thing - no difference.

So it appears that the problem is with either my TS-PC Racer wheel or Fanatec pedals. Neither have an on/off switch and I'm reluctant to disconnected/reconnect all of those cbles all the time, so I guess I'll be returning the golf game for a refund.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[RasmusP]

Thanks, Turk. I tried unplugging the joystick (which is only used for MSFS2020), but that made no difference. Also tried unplugging my VR head set. Same thing - no difference.

So it appears that the problem is with either my TS-PC Racer wheel or Fanatec pedals. Neither have an on/off switch and I'm reluctant to disconnected/reconnect all of those cbles all the time, so I guess I'll be returning the golf game for a refund.

Thanks for your thoughts.

You could disable the affected controllers in the device manager. Don't delete them, just de-activate! So you can re-activate them at any point.
I'm not 100% sure if re-activating would require a re-boot...

Most convenient would be a batch file that would do the deactivation + re-activation automatically for you. I'll see if that's possible!

 

[RasmusP]

Found quite an easy solution

1. open the device manager, find your wheel, pedals etc.
2. right click on the device -> properties -> details -> Dropdown menu, select "Hardware-IDs" (2 below the default entry)
3. right click on the first entry in the bottom part of that window -> copy

4. Create a new text document (.txt) anywhere on your PC
5. Edit the text document and put in this line for each device you want to disable:

devcon disable "USB\VID_045E&PID_02E6&REV_0100"

It's very important to put the hardware-ID in quotes!

6. Save the text document
7. Rename the text document from .txt to .bat

8. Run the bat file as administrator (select "yes" when Windows asks you about running it)

Without running it as administrator, devcon won't work!

I tested this with a few different entries and it works even with very weird Hardware-IDs like "devcon disable "*VMnetAdapter1"

To make your life even easier, you can put a "pause" at the end of the "disable" entries and then copy all lines and swap the "disable" for "enable".

This means that your CMD window will stay open until you hit any key while having that window in the foreground.
It will then re-enable all your devices and close itself.

Here's how my test file looks like:

devcon disable "USB\VID_045E&PID_02E6&REV_0100"
devcon disable "*VMnetAdapter1"
devcon disable "VPNVA"

pause

devcon enable "USB\VID_045E&PID_02E6&REV_0100"
devcon enable "*VMnetAdapter1"
devcon enable "VPNVA"

I attached my txt-file. RD doesn't allow bat-files to be attached. To make it run, you'd need to swap the .txt to .bat and run it as administrator. Otherwise it won't work.

If you don't to always right click on the bat file to run it as admin, just right click on it -> "Create shortcut".
Right click on the shortcut -> properties -> shortcut -> advanced -> "run as administrator"

(sadly in German):

 

[metalnwood]

I know you have a solution now but thought I would add I use this

GitHub - nefarius/HidHide: Gaming Input Peripherals Device Firewall for Windows.

Gaming Input Peripherals Device Firewall for Windows. - nefarius/HidHide

github.com

It allows you to whitelist what controllers are available to each piece of software. I primarily use it because I have a controller that is a button box and I have a virtual controller that uses the same buttons. I only want the software to see the virtual one so I use hidhide to make sure that iracing etc cannot see the physical one.

It sounds like for your scenario you would have a number of controllers hidden and then whitelist your racing games to see them but your golf game wont be able see any controller you have not let it see.

 

[RasmusP]

I know you have a solution now but thought I would add I use this

GitHub - nefarius/HidHide: Gaming Input Peripherals Device Firewall for Windows.

Gaming Input Peripherals Device Firewall for Windows. - nefarius/HidHide

github.com

It allows you to whitelist what controllers are available to each piece of software. I primarily use it because I have a controller that is a button box and I have a virtual controller that uses the same buttons. I only want the software to see the virtual one so I use hidhide to make sure that iracing etc cannot see the physical one.

It sounds like for your scenario you would have a number of controllers hidden and then whitelist your racing games to see them but your golf game wont be able see any controller you have not let it see.

This is absolutely awesome!
There's a bug when I have my Xbox controller and wheel plugged in at the same time, which constantly triggers an input in one direction.
That makes some games unplayable!

With this, I can hide my wheel for everything that isn't racing.

And then there was/is a bug with dirt rally 2.0 (but apparently it's also happening with a lot of other applications) that leads to microstuttering due to too many HID devices being active.

I don't really like to disable quite a lot of devices that also require a restart to work again for some microstuttering here and there.
However hiding everything apart from my wheel might help in that case!

 

[newbert]

Thanks for your innovative solutions, guys! But I think that I'll just go back to the tried and true.

It's the wheel that's causing the conflict - The mouse works in the golf game when the wheel is disconnected. Sooo,,,,I'm just going to get a simple USB male to female cable to use as an extension. This will make it a lot easier for me to physically disconnect and reconnect the wheel.

Thanks again!

 

[Durge Driven]

Thanks for your thoughts on this but I really don't want to add a further hardware expense (a hub) just to get one game to work.

Turning the wheel off may help, but I don't see any on/off switch on my TS PC-Racer. And unplugging cables from the back of the PC tower (which is on the floor) is difficult for me due to mobility limitations.

Understood but if you do don't buy cheap hub get one has a good chipset

Really would like to get that hub just for the power button each slot, 15 port one I have doesn't have them, I need to plug in 5 leads for sims mmm can't justify just for that

Had drama having everything plugged into motherboard and cheap hubs let alone swapping towers

You would think a hub running 15 devices running through I USB slot would be slow when opposite is true, I have 1TB external samsung SSD, Corsair Force 128GB SSD, a dual sata hub and external drives, everything runs fast no latency with wheel or headphones

 

[Fennario]

USB controller resources are tricky and can become a troubleshooting nightmare. Each controller has a limited number of resources and everything plugged into one uses some from drives to hubs and cords - to make things even more complicated, no manufacturer will tell you how much any certain thing uses.

The fix it and forget it solution is to purchase a PCI-E USB Controller Card which is the only way to add more USB controller resources to your PC.