error: sorry the input is already in use

You may wish to use N-Rage's plugin. Personally, I have no problem at all with Jabo's and my Sidewinder, but N-Rage's may save you a lot of hassle. If you have the same problem with N-Rage's then you may have not set the controller up properly within Windows.

i just came across this very problem. i do not know the new plugin well, but i got around the error, i think by setting the deadzone high, setting the controlls, then setting deadzone back low. you also need to make sure all your controls are centred/neutral/off. you have something like the Logitech Wingman with sliders? deadzone applies to all controls (i just learned). this may not be what the issue is/was for you, but give it a go.

Yea i've had this problem it can be due to deadzone, I think the default is 25% which I've never had a problem with. But if you lower it a shaky gamepad might misfire so to speak. Or you are trying to assign the same button twice which is a no no

glad that helped, maybe i haven't lost my helping people skills

deadzone is an amount of movement that will be ignored. if deadzone is too low, it becomes impossible to perfectly centre some controls, so the plugin picks up whatever it sees before you get a chance to set the control you want. do you see?

this is not really jabo's fault, the only thing he could do is put some user assistance in, for example not allowing deadzone changes until after controls are set (not sure how this could work practicaly) or to force e.g. 50% deadzone while controls are being set (like this better, but might cause problems setting some controls).

something about this needs to be added to the documentation... i'd like to think anything that gets me is not obvious

btw this (not allowing multiple n64 controls to be set to one pc control) was in my minor input issues from years ago, thanks J - if you hadn't done this the user would just end up with everything mapped to one control - at least now they are forced to find out what's wrong, so it's certainly an improvement.