Not sure if this has already been posted somewhere else but I recently began losing my control axes on my joystick and pedal in FSX while running on Win 8. The controllers would literally disappear from FSX controls section and you would be left with only the mouse. This didn't happen straight away after installing FSX on Win 8, just started about a week ago and would usually happen quickly especially while going elsewhere on the desktop or going through the FSX menus.

 

I read in several places that some people setup their axes using the full version of FSUIPC and they stay there even when the controllers disappear from FSX. I found that this didn't work for me so I tried running FSX in Windows 7 compatibility mode, I've so far found that this is the only way around this issue if it occurs in Win 8. You can enable Win 7 compatibility mode by finding the 'FSX.exe' file in your FSX folder via the properties window and enabling it on the 'compatibility' tab.

 

I don't why this started happening but from what I can see it could have something to do with running FSX in windowed mode as I normally do. Another temporary fix is to press ALT+ENTER and go into full screen mode, then go back to windowed mode again but this is only temporary as the loss of controllers will happen again later.

 

Hopefully this might help anyone who's running Win 8 and has experienced this.

Let me welcome you to the "Windows 8 my Joystick" party!

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/393486-windows-8-joystick-megathread-problem/