Windows 11 Controller Trouble

[McBrettorrson]

I have had this PC for ~1 year now. It is a surface laptop studio. It refuses to play nice with Snes9x. It refuses to detect any controllers or any inputs. I have tried multiple versions of the program to no avail. The controllers in question have been reliable. One is a wired xbox one controller that works well with Retroarch in Steam and regular games, with my Raspberry Pi running RetroPi, emulators on android, and even on my other PCs that are running the aforementioned software as well as Snex9x (various versions) on Windows 10. My other controllers are cheap usb snes controllers that work equally without trouble.

My first thought was that the problem could be with Windows 11 seeing as everything works fine on other OS. That said, I have seen multiple posts of others having no trouble with Windows 11.

The only problem I can perhaps suggest at this point is the usb connections with the laptop are somehow not playing nice with Snex9x. The laptop has two usb-c ports and the controllers are usb-a. They work fine as previously mentioned with a Microsoft hub, and the same hub works when plugging into my Android device.

When running Snes9x, it does register input from the keyboard for changing keys, but none from attached controllers. There is however an occasional ghost input into the first slot (up) it will automatically populate it with (J))left without any input pressed to my knowledge and without controllers plugged in.

Any support is appreciated.

[odditude]

try running the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer - snes9x may be relying on older DirectInput/XInput components which are no longer included in Windows.

[McBrettorrson]

try running the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer - snes9x may be relying on older DirectInput/XInput components which are no longer included in Windows.

Thanks for the suggestion. I did try this but the controller is still not registering. Again, works fine with other programs, just Snes9x is giving me grief

[odditude]

you mentioned Steam - do you have Steam running in the background? if so, shut it down; it's likely capturing input (which can interfere with legacy DirectInput programs).