Microsoft Strategic Commander X05-92630

I dug out my old Microsoft Strategic Commander X05-92630 to play some World of Warcraft with and had a hard time getting it to work. My first problem was the missing CD. My second was discovering that Microsoft has discontinued support for it. The drivers are included in windows XP, but the profile software for the buttons isn't.

There was a download in Microsoft downloads that looked promising. SWGameEN.exe. It was the 95/98 drivers, but other sites linked to it claiming it was 2000/XP compatible. I ran it and got this annoying error message. Error creating process . Reason: The system cannot find the file specified.

If I ran it in compatibility mode, the error went away. But it choked trying to load DirectX stuff. DirectX Setup Initialization Failed. I updated DirectX and it still failed. I searched for other copies of SWGameEN.exe but those failed with the same problem.

My final attempt before I tossed this in the trash was to search for the model number. X05-92630. Someone had repackaged the install files. http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=78554. It started the install and worked like a charm. There was a long pause where there was nothing on the screen and I started to think it failed. But it came back and told me to unplug and replug in my USB device.

I might rehost that download someplace else, but I'm up and running.

Update: I am now using
Zboard Fang Gamepad ZGP-1000