Gee thanks for the offer. May just take you up on it. I live in Marietta.

However, I am not sure at all if that would help though. There are no "unknown" drivers nor other Windows "device type" errors apparent. As a matter of fact, WIndows actually sees the Cougar device and just sends me to the Foxy Device Manager program when I click on "properties" just like its supposed to. So...it looks more like a part of the core Cougar firmware is not working properly. Since this issue happened mid-flash when my home power browned-out or failed, this makes me suspicious that something got trashed on the main Cougar PCB or some piece of data is damaged or corrupted in the OS of the Cougar joystick itself. Maybe the USB subroutines got trashed when my power went out. Who knows...

I have sent requests to Thrustmaster and to whoever is left at Cougarworld asking for help. The Thrustmaster guy started me at the beginning and asked me to reinstall everything and reconnect pr the manual. Did all that and got the same result. He has not answered my last three followup mails reporting my results. I figure he doesn't know anything either.

I was hoping that some great idea I hadn't thought of would quickly pop up in the Sim forums. So far, no bananas. Figure I now just need to send it off for repair. Will possibly do the latest Block 50 pressure sensitive stick update (eliminates all the springs in the handle and makes the stick just like the real F-16 cockpit stick) and redo all the pots in hte stick and the throttle. I think that's maybe $500 plus shipping. Still cheaper than the new Warthog stick. Know anyone who has one and likes it? Looks cool.

Marietta? That's actually pretty close, and my university's located there. I live in Dallas (no, not that one), but it's a short drive to Marietta.

Well, this is a bit of weirdness...then again, I've had similar weirdness before and managed to fix it just by using one of the front-panel USB ports to reflash. What gives? It helps if I have the hardware hands-on to tinker and experiment with, that's for sure.

Oh, and if you're looking for an F-16-style force-sensing stick mod, I'm selling my FCC-1. It's a good mod, most excellent for Falcon 4.0 and space "sims", but money's short right now. (But first, we'll have to figure out how to resuscitate your Cougar...)

I had the same issues with 3 brand new Cougars last June/July. I tried to install them on XP, Vista and Windows 7, tried to installed them on 5 different computers and nothing worked. I just bought a modded FCC2 Cougar off of a guy and I hope it works. It should be here on Nov 2nd.

Mine done it once, just wiped the fw (keep trigger oressed when you plug it) and software automatically reinstalled the fw on it. But uou have to in stall the cougar software in the correct way, google cougar w7 64 bit ( sorry i dont remember the correct addrees with the instructions). If still does not work yu coud gut the unit and put a leo bodnar's interface in place of the original elecronics.

Try to clear any residual Cougar programming/logical flags if any.

In Foxy, go to Cougar and in the drop down list try "HOTAS Cleanse" and then "Reset".

See if that gets you past the detection error.

plug_nickel