A newer USB/IP driver, and a fix for installs that silently skipped it
PadSense now ships usbip-win2 0.9.8.0. The version it replaces could bugcheck Windows under load, so this is worth taking even if everything has been working for you.
Getting it onto your machine turned out to be the harder half:
- The installer could silently leave the old driver in place. If a controller was still attached when you ran it, Windows would accept the new package but keep the previous driver bound — and every place you might check afterwards, including the usbip-win2 GUI, would report the new version while the old one was still running. The installer now waits for the controller to be released, and verifies the driver Windows actually bound rather than the version written in a file.
- Installing over a running copy could replace the program underneath itself. It now closes the running copy first, and PadSense refuses to start a second instance.
Driver health, visible in the menu
The tray menu now has a Drivers line, under the polling rate, that tells you whether PadSense's two kernel drivers are installed and responding. When something is wrong it says which one, and clicking it explains what to do — or offers to repair it where that is possible.
This exists because these failures used to be invisible. A driver that is installed but wedged, or a package that updated without the driver actually changing, looks exactly like a working machine until a controller fails to appear.
Smaller things
- Installing over a different PadSense edition no longer leaves that edition's desktop and Start-menu shortcuts behind.
- PadSense no longer needs
libusbip.dll. It talks to the USB/IP driver directly, so a driver update can no longer break PadSense by renaming something inside that library — which had happened in three consecutive releases. - Clearer logging when a controller fails to attach, including which driver layout was used.
Install
Download the installer below and run it. It checks for and upgrades its prerequisites (usbip-win2 and HidHide) if they are older than the bundled versions.
If a controller is currently attached, quit PadSense before installing so the driver can be replaced.
Windows 10 (1809+) or Windows 11, 64-bit.