Hi,
I reinstalled Windows 8.1 x64 from scratch, today. I applied all Windows updates. Installed are the following programs:
- Steam
- Origin
- Teamspeak
- Nvidia Experience
- Opera Browser
- PuTTY
- Xming
The issue is still 100% reproducable. I.e. Arma crashes, when my joystick is attached to the USB port it was *always* plugged into. I will call this port USB_A2 in the following. As previously stated, the joystick works fine in USB_A2 with Windows Gamecontroller Widget, BF3, BF4, etc. Arma 3 worked like a charm until approximately one month ago.
I did some more research with with the joystick and arma3 and discovered some interesting things.
When the joystick is disconnected from the USB_A2, when the game is frozen after the 3 splash screens, Arma 3 loads successfully into the main menu.
I plugged the joystick back into USB_A2 and the game froze, as i entered the configuration menu.
Unplugged the joystick again and Arma came back to life.
Now the interesting part: I plugged the joystick into another USB port (USB_B1) and all described problems are gone.
I believe this is a regression in Arma 3.