Two issues, one bad... one very bad

[LeeC22]

Well unfortunately, as much as I loathe this company for the way it treats customers, my business demands meant I had to upgrade to a SpaceExplorer from my TWO 4000FLX's. I'm now probably the only person with a simple SpaceExplorer that has effectively cost them over $1000 because of unsupported devices and no trade in options.

First the bad. XP detects the SpaceExplorer as a game controller (but doesn't show it in the Game Controllers section in the Control Panel), which is causing all sorts of problems with actual games. This isn't a game controller, so I don't know why it is being detected as one, but regardless of the reason, I need to disable it in XP as it has invisibly inserted itself between 2 real game controllers, which has messed up the settings. I can't find it in the Device Manager, so does anyone know where the device lives, so I can disable it?

Now the very bad... what the heck happened to the design of this thing? It feels like it has been designed with children in mind. It's so loose and flexing, it feels terrible. The 4000FLX had a fantastic "resistant" feel to it, which made precise motion a breeze. Now I feel like I am using the bottom of a jam jar balanced in custard on a biro spring. The ball of the 4000FLX was perfect to represent holding a 3-Dimensional object, which is what these controllers are supposed to give you the feel of.

As has been proven with flight technology, adding weight/resistance to a controller gives a greater level of precision (see the Blue Angel Aerobatics team for reference). Loose controls = imprecise controls, and that's exactly what has happened here. Where we used to have defined boundaries between axes, we now have a variable mush where the controller feels like it is always drifting.

So I am wondering, do I have a broken device, or are they all this bad? If the latter, are there any plans to fix them and make them as usable as the 4000/5000 were?

[LeeC22]

I managed to solve the problem of the invisible controller. I ran DXDiag, found the deviceID in the "Input" section, then went through the HID Compliant devices in Device Manager until I found a match... then I just disabled it.

So I just have the problem of the cheap, nasty, expensive controller to deal with now. I can't imagine that one being as easy to solve.