fsx-ms Losing Control Assignments - Frequently

[Mithras 87]

Hi,

 

I have a setup with Saitek gear, rudders, yoke, throttle, second throttle, trim wheel, Gamepad controller and a labelled custome keyboard with key assignments. For weeks or months the assignments work well. Sometimes I load a flight and they have all returned to default. I takes me 30-40 minutes to reassign everything!

 

It was initially, I suspected, because I was plugging in and out a joystick. However I leave it plugged in now, and to prevent conflicts use the FSX controls section to reduced sensitivity to zero and null zone to 100%, it seems to work well.

 

I am losing assignments frequently though, sonetimes after a couple of weeks, sometimes after a couple of days. I try not to load any applications up while FSX loads as Zi think that may have something to do with it too.

 

Can I save my assignments anywhere? If I could drop in a saved file, I eould be more than happy! Also I considered miving everything over to FSUIPC, but Immediately I struggled to find sone of the basic FSX commands I needed.

[airernie 263]

Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX\Controls in the Controls.XML file is where the control assignments are kept.

 

Make a backup copy and you should be good to go if the original gets corrupted again.

[spokes2112 179]

Ditto to what AirErnie said plus check this setting -

 

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options

Select the currently active profile | Change plan settings | Change advanced power settings

Scroll down to USB settings - Expand down to USB selective suspend setting 

Select Setting: Disabled

 

FSUIPC is the bomb! It has a rather large learning curve but once learned it becomes the best tool ever made. All stock commands (plus more not in FS assignments dialog) are available in FSUIPC.  

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

 

 

FSUIPC is the bomb! It has a rather large learning curve but once learned it becomes the best tool ever made. All stock commands (plus more not in FS assignments dialog) are available in FSUIPC.

 

One of the big and best days of my sim life was when I disabled controls in FSX and went exclusively to FSUIPC. 

[Mithras 87]

I do have FSUIPC and use it for the tricker assignments or for other controllers, I did try to 'migrate' to FSUIPC, but immediately I got stuck programming my yoke, couldn't find a comparable FSX ATC window command. I gave up!

[Mithras 87]

Spokes, thanks for the advice. What exactly does the power management on the USBs do? What was it doing before I set it to disable? Thanks.

 

[wardp 19]

I had a similar problem which in my case was how Windows assigned numbers to the USB devices as the order seemed to change regularly. My yoke was Joystick 3 when I set up all the axis/switch assignments then the next time it would be Joystick 2 and lost all the axis/switch assignments I had previously set up.

Search the FSIUPC manual for [JoyNames]. After reading that section I changed the FSUIPC.INI entry under [JoyNames] for AutoAssgnLetter=No to Yes and used FSUIPC to set up all my controls.

I've not had any problems since.

[spokes2112 179]

Spokes, thanks for the advice. What exactly does the power management on the USBs do? What was it doing before I set it to disable? Thanks.

 

Paul,

 

 About clear as mud on this but "I believe" that the USB port will go into a low power state if no discernable input has been made in a while. Therefore if the device(s) USB ports are in a low power state when FS loads they will not be detected, flushing your control settings. The feature is primarily for laptops to save the battery. I would guess a test for confirmation with the low power state enabled could be - Prior to starting FS move your controllers controls a bit to wake up the USB ports then start FS. If the assignments stick then this is the culprit. I've had this setting set to disabled from WinXP thru Win7 and never had any USB disconnects for any device.

[Mithras 87]

Thanks both. I have spent the evening assigning my controls and keys to FSUIPC, and also implemented Spokes's fix to prevent Windows dumping the default settings back in.

 

My only problem is that I have joystick and yoke plugged in at the same time for different aircraft. Today I am going to set up seperate profiles for yoke aircraft and joystick aircraft so that the axes do not conflict. Fingers crossed!

[wardp 19]

Let me know how you go on setting up separate profiles for yoke and joystick as that's something I am considering.

[Mithras 87]

Seems to have gone well! I set up the following profiles:

 

Airliner 2 engines yoke

Airliner 2 engines joystick

BN2Islander (lots of start up keys on my overhead keyboard!)

Airliner 4 engines yoke

Light Plane yoke

Light Plane joystick

 

These profiles handle just joystick, yoke and throttle set ups, as well as spoiler controls for the airliners, mapped to my two redundant prop control levers.

 

Seems to work. No doubt I will come across some problems as I test individual planes....