Update on unwanted movement with IPac

[ddoyle1996]

I am still having problems getting my Ipac to work properly.  Here's what's happening.

I am getting random movements with the Ipac.  It usually pulls left when I'm playing games that require a lot of joystick movement and button pressing.  It'll continue to pull left and it won't let me move in any other direction until I move left again.  Then it stops pulling and acts normally (for a little while).

Other times, it just randomly starts moving me.  I've played games where I'll stop touching the joystick, and all of a sudden I start racing to the right.

The really weird thing is - I can map the player 1's controls to the player 2's joystick, and it still happens.  Also, if we play a two-player game, it happens to one player or the other - it's not limited to player 1 when 2 players are playing.  

I can add a few things in response to a previous post - I do not have any analog joysticks.  I am not running McAfee AV or the MS Sidewinder driver.  There are not a lot of wires around the joystick putting pressure on the switches.  The wires are wired to the proper terminals (NO and COM).  I have rewired the joystick and it still does it.  I have moved the player 1 wires to player 4's inputs on the Ipac and it still does it.  I've checked all the wiring and none of it is loose, and I have no strands of wire loose.  

Could there be some kind of software problem causing this, or does it sound like the Ipac?  I am running Advancemame and Advancemenu on Windows 2000.

[ErikRuud]

Try palying a game with the I-Pac disconnected, just use the keyboard.  If the problem occurs then you know it is not the I-Pac.

For my own problem, I tried re-installing the MS Sidewinder drivers, and the problem came back.  I thought about it for a while, and then I checked my mame setting.  I had Joystick 0 in my mame.ini, I switched it to 1 and the problem went away!

[ddoyle1996]

I don't think I have any Sidewinder drivers installed, unless microsoft installed them automatically with Windows 2000.

Do you know what the names of the drivers for the Sidewinder are?

[ErikRuud]

Check in your Device Manager.

Right click "My Computer", select "Properties", click the hardware tab, click "Device Manager", click on "Sound, Video and Game Controllers".

The list should show if you have any joystick drivers installed.

[_Iz-]

I've had it happen with joystick drivers other than sidewinder...