Problem with joystick

The joystick is a USB Microsoft Precision Sidewinder. It should plug-n-play on a Windows XP system. I plugged it into a tower with XP Media Center and it picked it up and installed it immediately; the same on an older laptop with XP Home. However, when I plug it into the laptop where it is going to spend its time, nothing happens. No "BONK!" sound when Windows XP Home detects a USB device, nothing. I plugged in other USB devices (a flash drive, a ZiP drive, and a wifi adapter), and all those come up right away. So- it seems that this joystick is simply not recognized on this particular laptop (an older HP ze4200). I have no answers. I thought maybe it was a USB1.1 vs USB2.0 issue, so I tried the joystick on a WAY OLD system, and it worked fine. So- does anyone have any idea why a joystick is recognized and working fine on 3 other PCs, but not the one laptop, but all other USB devices are immediately recognized and installed on this one laptop... yeah... weird....
:confused

 

:celebrate Problem solved. The owner of the laptop apparently tried to "force" the drivers in by using an evil mix of Driver Detective ( :eek ) and the driver CD for the joystick (which is unneeded in XP). Doing this seemed to have caused a 'block' of WinXP's ability to detect and install the joystick. So I removed Driver Defective, removed the joystick drivers listed in Add/Remove Programs, ran CCleaner on HD and registry, then rebooted. After the desktop loaded, I plugged in the joystick and all worked as it should. And, yes, I tested the joystick via the Control Panel's "Gaming Controllers" applet, and it responded perfectly.
:-D

[dlb]

 

Just another example of how reading the instructions and not trusting bloatware helps everyone.