hotas losing its configuration in DCS.

[Oddball52]

Seems like I've read about this happening because of something Win10 is doing.  Reassigning the hotas to a new designation where DCS doesn't recognize it as the stick that's already set up.  Also seems like I read about a workaround or fix, but can't find anything in the forums doing a search...

Anyone know how to fix this?

[72westy]

What HOTAS?

[Oddball52]

It's a Saitek X-65f.  But I'm thinking that's not the cause.  At least I don't think it only happens with this hotas.  I'm thinking it's a Windows issue.

IIRC from a thread I read a long time ago...    If you unplug your hotas, run the computer, then plug it back in, Windows  can sometimes assign it a new ID #, DCS sees it as a different hotas, and all of your configurations (key assignments, axis tunes) have to be redone.

I've been going along smooth as silk since I set this up 6 months ago, until I ran that box for a day without the hotas being plugged in.  When I plugged the hotas back in (computer was off while plugging in, not that that should matter), windows recognized it as an X-65f, but said the driver wasn't working.  I had to go through a bit of a dance, uninstalling, designating a generic driver, then running the driver installation exe to get it reinstalled. 

Then DCS looked at it as a new hotas.

That old thread talked about a way to assign a specific ID# to the hotas in Windows.  IIRC, it was specific to the USB port used, so you always had to plug it back into the same slot.

Workaround for me, now that I've got most planes configured again, is to not run that system unless the hotas is plugged in.  Will be inconvenient only on rare occasions.  I just wouldn't want it to happen accidentally and lose all my configs again...

[Johnny Dioxin]

Someone wrote a bat file for changing the USB IDs. I found it had some issues (at least when I tried it) so now - though sounding a little long-winded - is, when I see I've lost the assignments due to this problem, I go to the controls UI and take screenshots of the USB IDs for each controller (you can get them from the lua files, but I do it this way because I have 3 controllers with the same name!) which I then type into a text file.

Then I simply use the windows search function in a folder window to find all the entries for each controller in turn and rename the lot in one go.

Sounds a faff, but actually works quite easy and quickly - about 20 minutes, which is better than the old days when I had to reassign 6 controllers for 27 aircraft and it took a couple of hours or more.