What Howard said, but you could also try Vjoy and UJR/UCR to feed it. A single Vjoy device will take the first (#0?) joystick spot, which will probably bump your other devices down the list by +1 each. I'm using Vjoy to get better control of some old wheels, and nothing has any trouble seeing it as the first device. Assuming that's the problem here, of course.
Or you can figure out which spot to place the wheel to have it show up first - into control panel, devices and printers, right click on a game controller and go to properties. The order in which things appear is the numbering, I believe. It will always be the same each time you boot, assuming nothing is unplugged and nothing new plugged in.
EDIT: by which I meant, of course, that you can plug your devices into different ports to change the order/numbering.