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Sometimes during games that have significant downtime (lobby waits, briefings, etc) I leave the 360 controller alone for long enough that it disconnects. If I attempt to immediately reconnect by turning the controller back on with the center (Guide?) button, the controller's lights indicate that it has reconnected, but the computer won't register any inputs from it.

Is there a recommended way to reconnect after the idle timeout?

Things I've tried already:

  • Disconnecting and reconnecting the receiver from the computer allows the controller to connect, though it often reconnects as player 2, then 3, then 4...then 1 again, and that seems to matter for how the computer enumerates it. Once it's back to player 1, all my software except for Teamspeak will recognize it as the same controller. The push-to-talk in Teamspeak has to be rebound.

  • Waiting for "a long time" (i.e. putting the controller down after a play session and then using it the next session) allows it to reconnect normally (i.e. I don't need to rebind anything, and it reconnects as player 1) so it seems like there's a second idle timer in play, but I don't know how long it is.

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  • This sounds like a bug in the game itself or its input library. Can you edit to include the name of the flight sim(s)? I've seen similar issues in older emulators, I think the issue was resolved by upgrading to a newer version of SDL. Try updating your flight sim app, if you're already on the latest version then get in touch with the developer.
    – nondebug
    Apr 16, 2020 at 0:33
  • I can reproduce this outside of flight sims, it's just my most common use case for having the controller idle out while there will be consequences when it does. Maybe I should edit that out as a red-herring.
    – Erin Anne
    Apr 16, 2020 at 3:02

1 Answer 1

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It turns out the issue is with Teamspeak. I happened to close TS while the controller was in its "connected to the receiver, but not recognized by Windows" state and that allowed Windows to recognize it. Adding Teamspeak to my searches for the problem led me to the linked thread and the fix.

The issue is apparently something to do with the way Teamspeak's joystick support is broken; disabling or removing the Teamspeak "Gamepad and Joystick Hotkey Support" addon allows the gamepad to reconnect to Windows normally.

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  • Not sure why I never suspected Teamspeak was the issue since I specifically call it out as having unusual symptoms in the question. At the same time I'm surprised that a chat app is managing to stop Windows from seeing the joystick reconnect.
    – Erin Anne
    Jul 7, 2021 at 18:44
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    The question is Why the hell is teamspeak listening for controller inputs? In the small case where you would map your push to talk to a controller button?
    – Fredy31
    Aug 6, 2021 at 19:07
  • @Fredy31 yes, that's why. I was using that functionality because I was frequently flying things multiplayer in Arma 3 and DCS. Not always convenient to reach for the mouse PTT.
    – Erin Anne
    Aug 6, 2021 at 21:34
  • Guess their thing that listens to inputs is overbearing and trys to manage basically all controller inputs. I would guess the easy fix would be to desactivate that function of TS and have to work with having a keyboard closeby for the PTT
    – Fredy31
    Aug 9, 2021 at 12:53

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