I feel like I must be missing something very obvious, so feel free to insult my intelligence.

I recently got Arkham City to play off Steam, and decided that I'd much prefer to play it with an Xbox controller, as Arkham Asylum's combat was kind of a pain in the ass with the keyboard. I ordered a wireless adapter from Amazon (looks like the image to the side) and I've been trying to set this up. However, the adapter and control don't sync! The lights flash on both, they're right next to each other, but no dice.

TIA.

I have the same device connected to my PC and I don't remember having to do any extra setup beyond plugging it in for it to be able to sync with my controllers. Maybe you should try another controller on it and if that doesn't work perhaps the device is defective.

This may be dumb to add but make sure, if you also have a 360, it isn't synced to that.

Also, some games won't recognize the controller if you sync it up after you have started up the game. Make sure the controller is synced before you start the game.

I will be honest, it sucks, but the best way to use a 360 controller on a pc is just go with a wired one. The wireless adapters and so on have always had weird issues and been very hit or miss.

Restart your computer and try again. I know it sounds cliche, but restarting eliminates a lot of unknown variables.

Next, have you installed the 360 controller drivers?I'm not sure if the wireless controller requires them, but my wired controller was wonky until I installed them.

If that doesn't work, there's a chance there's something weird with the USB port you have your wireless adapter plugged into. Try swapping the port and see what happens.

If that still hasn't fixed your controller, post back and the community will undoubtedly have something else to try.

@Karkarov said:

I will be honest, it sucks, but the best way to use a 360 controller on a pc is just go with a wired one. The wireless adapters and so on have always had weird issues and been very hit or miss.

Once it works, it works. And it usually works without doing anything

@burnsep: Sometimes though you have to go to your device manager, find the unknown/borked device on the list, and manually tell it to use the right driver. On Windows 7 it always worked perfectly for me, but I had to go in and tell it the driver to use on my Windows 8 machine. Try that out.

Thanks for the suggestions everybody. The drivers are installed and the 360 I use with these controllers is out of range and off, so it shouldn't interfere. I'll try going into the device manager when I get home.

I'll also look into a wired controller and new rechargeable battery packs for the old ones, just to know what the options are.

Wired controllers are awesome if you don't need a wireless one. As for your situation, try what they said above. Make sure the drivers are downloaded / installed, and then make sure you sync it up before you play the game. If you do anything after the fact while playing pc games you end up running into some issues a good portion of the time.

@Grilledcheez said:

Wired controllers are awesome if you don't need a wireless one. As for your situation, try what they said above. Make sure the drivers are downloaded / installed, and then make sure you sync it up before you play the game. If you do anything after the fact while playing pc games you end up running into some issues a good portion of the time.

I'm of the opinion that the wires are an added hassle. Too many cables as it is, a wireless one is well worth the extra $20. And it's really not that difficult to get set up, as long as you don't run into any issues, and even those tend to be real easy to fix. I remember for my first time, I just plugged in the dongle, and the drivers installed automatically and I never had to do anything but hit the sync buttons. Boom, done.

@burnsep said:

I feel like I must be missing something very obvious, so feel free to insult my intelligence.

I recently got Arkham City to play off Steam, and decided that I'd much prefer to play it with an Xbox controller, as Arkham Asylum's combat was kind of a pain in the ass with the keyboard. I ordered a wireless adapter from Amazon (looks like the image to the side) and I've been trying to set this up. However, the adapter and control don't sync! The lights flash on both, they're right next to each other, but no dice.

TIA.

I had one of those receivers (or at least one very similar). It worked great for a while, then it crapped out on me, blinking but not seeing the controller. Supposedly there's some particular component (a fuse, I think) that tends to be a common point of failure, so it's possible that it could be the cause.