Posted November 14, 2017
A couple of weeks ago, I saw this chinese knockoff DualShock USB from Dazz a in a store and it got my attention because of its price, 35 BRL, way cheaper than any other controller knockoffs in the market around here (the cheaper ones usually go for double that price, minimum). I looked it up online and found some people actually praising the thing. So, yesterday I went to the same store and, upon seeing it again, decided to pick it up.
I got back home and tested it on my Raspberry Pi3 and it worked well enough. It feels very cheap indeed and has a very tiny cord, but it is responsive and somewhat precise.
A bit later, I plugged it to my PC and installed its drivers (the manual says that if you don’t have the CD that comes with the controller, you can download the drivers directly from Microsoft’s website, so I’m assuming the drivers are generic Microsoft drivers) and, again, it worked very nicely. Guilty Gear Xrd recognized it instantly and I didn’t even need to configure anything, while Street Fighter V asked me to map it to an XBox controller layout and worked just fine again.
Naturally, I went on to test it with a few racing games as well. Now, I’ve had Grid 2 and Dirt Showdown installed for a few years (I bought them, then had to put the PC away for little over a year and after I got it back, I never got around to going back into playing and finishing them) and decided to try Dirt Showdown first. The game wouldn’t start and so, I put steam to verify its files and it downloaded some 30Mb of data. I started the game again, and steam began installing the last few things before running the game (DirectX, etc). When the game started, all its colors were completely fucked up, straight from the first opening video. Getting back to my desktop and everything remained fucked up (the orange color in my wallpaper turned pink, for example). So I rebooted and tried again. The colors kept fucked up (though Alt+F4ing before it got to the main menu prevented the desktop from fucking up as well) and steam kept saying all files were ok.
I moved on to Grid 2 and, while it had fucked up colors on the first attempt to run it, later steam verified a bunch of fucked up files and redownloaded some +350Mb. After that, it ran fine (but didn’t even recognize the controller anyway).
After that, I figured I’d uninstall Dirt Showdown, since I couldn’t find any references to said bug or how to solve it online. It uninstalled without any incidents, but when I rebooted the PC a bit after it, Windows 10 couldn’t start nor recover its startup process. Oh-Oh!
Windows offered me a bunch of options and the one that worked was using a restoration point from the day before. Once back into windows, when I started steam, it began verifying itself and then, after fixing itself, it opened normally and Dirt Showdown showed as not installed (despite Win listing it among the installed programs in the “uninstall programs” list).
So I rebooted the PC once more to find it again unable to start and offering a bunch of options to recover. Restored to the same point again, and it would work and restart properly until I opened steam and it began to verify and fix itself again.
Finally, I sucked it up and, after backing up the important stuff, I reseted Windows instead of using a restoration point. I told it to keep my data, but I went ahead and deleted Steam’s folder before installing it anew. So far, so good. For now I won’t even try to install Dirt Showdown again, but, still, what caused my problem after all?
The knockoff’s drivers?
Dirt’s installation process? Or its uninstallation process?
Steam’s autofix was clearly fucking up stuff even further, but why? Was it a problem with the beta, maybe?
In the end, I don’t know, but thought it would be nice to share the little adventure with you guys.
Ps.: I’ll keep myself away from steam client betas for a while, just in case.
I got back home and tested it on my Raspberry Pi3 and it worked well enough. It feels very cheap indeed and has a very tiny cord, but it is responsive and somewhat precise.
A bit later, I plugged it to my PC and installed its drivers (the manual says that if you don’t have the CD that comes with the controller, you can download the drivers directly from Microsoft’s website, so I’m assuming the drivers are generic Microsoft drivers) and, again, it worked very nicely. Guilty Gear Xrd recognized it instantly and I didn’t even need to configure anything, while Street Fighter V asked me to map it to an XBox controller layout and worked just fine again.
Naturally, I went on to test it with a few racing games as well. Now, I’ve had Grid 2 and Dirt Showdown installed for a few years (I bought them, then had to put the PC away for little over a year and after I got it back, I never got around to going back into playing and finishing them) and decided to try Dirt Showdown first. The game wouldn’t start and so, I put steam to verify its files and it downloaded some 30Mb of data. I started the game again, and steam began installing the last few things before running the game (DirectX, etc). When the game started, all its colors were completely fucked up, straight from the first opening video. Getting back to my desktop and everything remained fucked up (the orange color in my wallpaper turned pink, for example). So I rebooted and tried again. The colors kept fucked up (though Alt+F4ing before it got to the main menu prevented the desktop from fucking up as well) and steam kept saying all files were ok.
I moved on to Grid 2 and, while it had fucked up colors on the first attempt to run it, later steam verified a bunch of fucked up files and redownloaded some +350Mb. After that, it ran fine (but didn’t even recognize the controller anyway).
After that, I figured I’d uninstall Dirt Showdown, since I couldn’t find any references to said bug or how to solve it online. It uninstalled without any incidents, but when I rebooted the PC a bit after it, Windows 10 couldn’t start nor recover its startup process. Oh-Oh!
Windows offered me a bunch of options and the one that worked was using a restoration point from the day before. Once back into windows, when I started steam, it began verifying itself and then, after fixing itself, it opened normally and Dirt Showdown showed as not installed (despite Win listing it among the installed programs in the “uninstall programs” list).
So I rebooted the PC once more to find it again unable to start and offering a bunch of options to recover. Restored to the same point again, and it would work and restart properly until I opened steam and it began to verify and fix itself again.
Finally, I sucked it up and, after backing up the important stuff, I reseted Windows instead of using a restoration point. I told it to keep my data, but I went ahead and deleted Steam’s folder before installing it anew. So far, so good. For now I won’t even try to install Dirt Showdown again, but, still, what caused my problem after all?
The knockoff’s drivers?
Dirt’s installation process? Or its uninstallation process?
Steam’s autofix was clearly fucking up stuff even further, but why? Was it a problem with the beta, maybe?
In the end, I don’t know, but thought it would be nice to share the little adventure with you guys.
Ps.: I’ll keep myself away from steam client betas for a while, just in case.
