Xbox 360 controller, Vista laptop and old games?

I'm thinking of picking up Tomb Raider 1 and Final Fantasy VII for the PC, and am wondering if they will work with the Xbox 360 controller? Furthermore, how n00b-friendly is the Xbox 360 controller in Windows, set-up wise, and how much intelligent automation is there? I've always found PC controllers a pain to set-up, in terms of deadzones, button mapping, etc, hence why I tend to game primarily on the Xbox 360, and avoid PC gamepad games like the plague. But Tomb Raider and FFVII ain't on the 360!

 

Well the 360 works fantastic with XP, despite the default Microsoft drivers not allowing button mapping or sensitivity adjustment. With modded XBCD drivers, brilliant

I read somewhere that the 360 gamepad works equally well with Vista... but then you're looking for a Vista owner to confirm that

 

Hah, that's weird... Just as I was reading through this post, an email came in from XBOX News.

 

I used a wired controller and it worked really well.

All you have to do is once you plug it in is run windows update and it will detect and update the drivers for you.

 

Did anyone get the XBCD drivers to work with Vista?

 

Slightly off topic;

Has anyone tried the mouse / keyboard adapter for the 360? Problems?

TIA

 

to make the 64 bit Vista driver work you need to read the file that procedes and do what it says. When it says to copy the xbcd.sys and .inf files run the installer instead

 

I've had a horrible experience with the wireless xbox reciever and controller. I cannot get it working on many games. Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 wont recognize it for some reason. I try to tick "Use xbox 360 controller for windows" but it resets back to No every time. I tried using it in Assasins Creed PC and it wouldnt recognize it. I tried using it for Battlefield 2 for Flying airplanes but whenever I push the left Analog stick all the way up it "reverses" itself and goes back down. I've had this issue running emulators aswell. Another game where it wouldnt work was Call of Duty 4 for PC. I also tried Oblivion for PC and it wouldnt work correctly because of what i just described right now. The Axis would reverse when you tilt the left analog stick all the way up.

Whenever you push your left analog stick all the way up the axis reverses for some reason.

Another thing, i havent been able to get any game recognize the xbox 360 mic in order to voice chat. No luck with Battlefield 2, CoD4, R6V2.

The ONLY game where everything worked fine was Halo 2 for PC, that's IT!

 

I have had XBCD working in both Vista x86 and Vista x64.

Of the late tho I can not get them to work in Vista x64 again, I dunno what has changed or what I did wrong but they just keep failing to install.

There are a few pages on the drivers and the install process but when you google it there is alot of old information mixed in there and even the good pages dont seem to be updated anymore or maintained so you have to do your research to make sure you have the newest versions of things.

Just play with it and hope for the best, even if you end up stuck with the MS drivers like I am now on Vista x64 I still think the 360 pad is the best PC controller I have ever used.