Thanks Olham.

If Saitek customer support doesn't give me a fix (and per others I don't expect them too) I will be stick shopping.
16 buttons should be plenty for WOFF I reckon and the precision on this one may help my shooting!
My Logitech 3d Extreme Pro back-up stick has ten buttons and I sometimes find myself taking my hands off the stick to hit something on the keyboard. Nice stick though for $30.00. Recommended for cost conscious WOFF'ers
Will miss the separate throttle though on the X52 but oh well. Just glancing about earlier at various stick and throttle combos and you can drop a $1000.00 if you want. That's a little much for me for a joystick short of a lottery windfall.

If you are shopping around, you might consider a Microsoft FFB2 stick (used) on the internet. If you can get it at a good price you won't regret it.

Actually that was my stick for a lot of years. Still have it in the basement I think. I am trying to remember why I stopped using it - I don't think it's broken. Maybe I just like a lot of buttons or something. And in WOFF you really need them IMHO with the complicated key press combos.
FF kind of dropped off eh? I thought it was a cool feature but apparently it never really took off as I don't think you see it much in new sticks if at all.

I think it dropped off because it was too expensive to manufacture and the parts are "A-one" quality. That is why so many of them still are in fine running condition. New force feedback sticks are few and very very expensive.

As for buttons and key-press I recommend you download and try:

VoiceAttack

This software allows you to allocate all your necessary commands to a voice activation so no need for buttons. I have the full version which cost me $8.00 US. It was worth it. I hardly use my buttons and keyboard anymore. I just keep a list of the voice commands handy in case I forget.

Best Regards;

I had a game years ago, some space game, forget what it was, that had voice commands. And I think there was also a mod for CFS2 that did voice commands. At the time, when the children were still home I felt a little silly talking to a game. Think I was a bit of a tight a$$ back then. Course I died a lot too fumbling for key commands. Plus I kind of mumble.
But I am older and much more silly now so I will check it out. Thanks.
And of course I am very silly. I am a B.O.C.'er!

There are FF Josticks available and I can recommend to anyone, if buying a new Joystick, then make the step getting one with FF. They are available, there are just not too many NEW models produced. But why should they. The ones they are still producing and selling are very good since couple years so no need to make every year new models.

I'm using the Saitek Cyborg Evo Force.

Cheers

Duke;

here is a link to a very good article on the comparisons of the Microsoft Force Feedback 2 technology and the Saitek force feedback technology. I think you may find it informative. It is a long article and cover all the details about the two sticks but weed out the comparisons of the force feedback technology used and the pros and cons of each stick in this area.

here is the link and article by AlienHack:

Force Feedback comparisons link

In summary the article points out:

"its spring i s a little soft and combined with the topweight make the stick move very easy so you cant make milimeter changes of your heading. you just push a little and you already droped the nose 1 cm onscreen. there is a mod that people do to make the spring harder. i dont know if it fixes things. actually the more i use it the more i understand that the problem is the mechanics - the use of a spring- , its nothing the designer could do with spring technology. the way the sprint keeps the stick is prone to overmove with the slightest push you give it. You have to contrast this with the motor feeling the microsoft stick gives you. its a diferent league . the motors keep the stick to centered that even the slightest move of your hand translates in milimeters of move on screen.
if i hadnt used a micrososft sidewinder FF2 maybe i wouldnt have noticed the issue with the Saitek. Nevertheless i could excuse saiteks lack of microcontrol BUT the next issue is the dealbraker for me. "

I found the following link which discusses hardware modding the MSFF2 stick and it gives some great visuals of what is inside the stick and how it works.

MSFFB2 stick internals and hardware modding it

Well, to Saiteks credit, their customer support people got back to me right away Monday A.M. despite the Internet naysayers.
Whether their advice is going to actually work is another story but the instructions were quite detailed.
Basically it was nothing I haven't tried but the bullet was:

"Please install 4.5.1 .NET framework for your PC. Updating your framework will help your computer's devices run properly, smoother, and faster.
You can download 4.5.1 with this link.. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40779"

I am almost positive this is already on my system unless this is some special version but this weekend I may give it a shot.
If anyone is having this issue PM me and I can "cut and paste" the entire instructions if you like.

Well, if it helps, I just checked and 4.5.1 is on my system. Sorry for your troubles, wish I could be of more help!

Actually it does help, thank you.
It tells me this is probably not going to work and to set up a Restore Point before I try. And have about 90 minutes to sit around and perform an "after attempt" clean-out and recovery procedure.
Oh, and to get a 5 pound sledge and petrol ready so I can smash and burn the g-d thing when I am done!

You have my sympathy. I have CFS3 ETO 1.40 (Our beloved Devs used to work with some of those guys back in the day), and I've lost the sound in the cockpit view only. And because they didn't get quite as sophisticated as Pol & the rest, there is a lot more jumping through hoops to re-install. And I don't even have time to get in the air much, much less fool around with a re-install.

Say your prayers & keep your sledge hammers at a safe distance!

I came across this thread while trying to find a fix for errors with the Saitek X-52 Pro. The drivers would not install and during the process where it detects the controller it would hang up the program and the whole computer essentially. The only thing that worked for me was to uninstall the drivers for the eXtensible Host Controller Interface for USB 3.0 on my system. Then I was able to install the drivers fine and the X-52 Pro works all fine and dandy. Except now I have some yellow exclamations in Device Manager that I know are related to the XHCI drivers and I'm hesitant to reinstall the drivers in case it causes the X-52 Pro issues again.

Huh. Well thanks for the tip.
I tried disabling the two items related to USB 3.0 and my system became unresponsive.
I had exactly the same issues you had initially with the stupid drivers and Saitek customer service was no help.
I will look back in this thread where I named the things I disabled and see if one of mine is the same as yours or close to it.
My one concern is that because of the way my system is (SSD drive being used as a cache) 3.0 may be required.

As for reenabling after driver install I would think you would be good? That's just a guess.
The lock-up the driver issue causes is a huge PITA.

EDIT: Yes! One of my two USB 3.0 things is named just like yours. So instead of disabling both, which essentially killed my system, I will just try that one. Now that the work week has started it may be several days before I can goof with it. Keep me apprised of what you do and how it works please.
Oh - did your 3.0 ports still work? IIRC I got 6 of those and 4 of the 2.0 so with everything being USB anymore I don't think I can go without it.

For future generations of WOFF'ers who may search this thread. Had some time to experiment.
As I feared I cannont disable anything to do with USB 3.0 or my system becomes unresponsive.
So my Saitek is now a paper weight until the company decides to do something with their drivers.
Or if that does not occur I will donate it to a worthy B.O.C. brother.

Dukeironhand,

Possibly something you have already tried, but I will mention it anyway. If you have sub ports on the front of your machine (assuming it is a twer case), they are normally usb 2 as opposed to sub 3. I realise it is a long shot, and you may well have decided enough is enough.

Thanks for the thought but yea I am certainly done for now till Saitek comes out with something new.
I have analyzed the port situation throughly (I have 6 USB 3.0 and 4 USB 2.0) but that is not it I am afraid.
Per most of the Internet stuff it is the presence of USB 3.0 that conflicts certainly with the driver - maybe the hardware too.
Since my system cannot do without 3.0 it is pretty much a done deal. In fact I am still trying to recover from the latest attempt as we speak.
After a System Restore WOFF has decided to stop working. Trying to fix now.